>> Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much
for being here. It is certainly an exciting
time on our campus right now, and this Patten lecture is
definitely a jewel of our academic community. So I'm so excited to see so many
of you here with us tonight. Today's Patten Foundation
lecture featuring Serhii Plokhii will certainly
be an exciting evening. My name is Carrie Docherty. I'm the Vice Provost for
Faculty and Academic Affairs, and I'm here just to say a few
words about Mr. Patten and the legacy of his bequest. In 1931, William T. Patten of
Indianapolis made a gift of $150,000 to establish the
Patten Foundation at his alma mater. At the time, it was the single
largest gift ever pledged to the Bloomington campus. Under the terms of the gift,
which became available upon the death of Mr. Patten in
1936, a visiting professor was chosen each year, originally
in residence for two months or more of a year. The purpose of this
appointment was to provide members of the university,
students, faculty, staff, the privilege of a
personal acquaintance with the visiting professor. While those terms have changed
over the years, we now typically have two Patten
lecturers spend a week on campus each year. The spirit of this
lectures remain unchanged. Patten was a strong believer
in public higher education, and he believed that
Indiana University, still a small regional
institution, had a role in enriching
the intellectual life of the local community
and the state. His gift to establish the
Patten Foundation reflects this commitment
of supporting that intellectual
contribution. Patten was born in
1867 on a farm in Sullivan County, Indiana. He taught in the county
schools before enrolling at Indiana University
at the age of 21. He was a diligent student,
a competitive orator, an associate editor of the
Indiana Student Newspaper. He received his undergraduate
degree in history in 1893. After graduation, Patten
settled in Indianapolis, where he made a career in real
estate and county politics. The Patten lectures continue
to reflect his commitment to Indiana education, a
campus-wide faculty committee selects people of national and
international reputation, who are willing and able
to share their knowledge with a wide public audience. Lecturers stay on campus for
one academic week during which time they interact
with faculty and students in classes and
informal gatherings and deliver two
public lectures. We are thrilled that Serhii
Plokhii is here as the 2025-2026 Patten
Lecturer. A special thanks for those
who enabled this visit. His nominator, Clare Griffin
in the Department of History, and the many departments and
units supporting his visit. They include History, Slavic
and East European Languages and Cultures, Russian and East
European Institute, Folklore and Ethnomusicology,
International Studies, Hamilton Lugar School,
and Political Science. Thanks also goes to
Provost Shrivastav and the Provost's Office,
Hutton and Wells Scholars, the Cox Research Scholars
Program, Ukrainian Studies Organization,
The Emeriti House, and, of course, the
Patten Committee. To introduce our esteemed
guest, I am happy to present Michael DeGroot from
international studies. [ Applause ] >> Good evening. I remember back when the Russian
invasion of Ukraine started in February of 2022, the Russian
and East European Institute organized a number
of events, teachings, and I was quite struck by the
intellectual energy and curiosity for understanding
this part of the world. And as we look out
into the audience, I think it's a testament
to the community that that interest remains quite
strong to this present day. Although rooted in
regional dynamics, this conflict has had global
reverberations and has reshaped the world order
in ways that are still evolving. It has upended the lives
of millions of Ukrainians, transformed Russian society, and Russia's place in the
international system, and even though the
fighting takes place thousands of miles away from
American borders, it has posed fundamental
questions about the United States'
role in the world, and touches us
all in our daily lives in ways large and small. At the end of last year, just
to name one small example, when the U.S. Treasury slapped
sanctions on Russian oil giants Rosneft and LukOil, we saw the
spike in gas prices in gas stations along
College Mall. So why did Putin
start the war? And what does it mean for
the future of world order? How should we understand
the war's place in the broader sweep of
international history? And there's perhaps nobody
better positioned to help us understand these questions
and develop answers than our speaker tonight,
Professor Serhii Plokhii. Professor Plokhii is the
Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukranian History
at Harvard University. Between 2013 and 2025, he also
served as the Director of the Harvard Ukrainian
Research Institute, where he still leads a group
of scholars working on MAPA, the digital atlas
of Ukraine, which is an online
GIS-based project. Professor Plokhii is published
widely on the intellectual, cultural and international
history of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, with an
emphasis on Ukraine. His body of work is
probably familiar to many of us
in the audience. His publication record is
prodigious, both in quality and quantity, and it seems
that every time you blink, he's published a new book
that changes the field in significant ways. He's set a very high standard
that's difficult for the rest of
us to match. And much of Professor
Plokhii's early research focused on questions of
identity and nationhood in the early modern period. More recently, his research
shifted to the 20th century, and he's published books on
topics such as the Yalta Conference and the
Cuban Missile Crisis. His book "The Last Empire: The
Final Days of the Soviet Union" examines the Ukrainian
role in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it's a
personal favorite of mine and very familiar to students
who have taken my class. Other research focuses on the
history of nuclear energy and nuclear disasters. He's the author of the book "Atoms and Ashes: A Global
History of Nuclear Disasters" and his two recent books "Chernobyl Roulette: War in
the Nuclear Disaster Zone" and "The Nuclear Age: A Epic Race
for Arms, Power and Survival" will serve as the basis for
his lecture on Thursday. His work has illuminated the
historical background of the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, and the personalities and structural forces that
continue to shape the conflict. His books "The Gates of
Europe: A history of Ukraine" and the "Lost Kingdom: The
Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation"
are essential reading for those wishing to place the
current conflict in historical context. Professor Plokhii's books have
won many awards, including the Lionel Gelber
Prize for the best English language book on international
relations, the Baillie Gifford
Prize for nonfiction and the Duke d'Arenburg
Prize in European history. His book, "The Last Empire",
which was published by Basic Books in 2015 alone
won three major awards, including the Pushkin House Book
Prize, an honor, again, he received in 2018
for the book "Chernobyl: History of a
Tragedy." Professor Plokhii also writes
for general audiences and is an authoritative
voice for understanding the Russian invasion
of Ukraine. His commentary on this topic
has been published by Chatham House, the Wall Street
Journal, The Financial Times and the Washington
Post, among many others. His talk this evening is
entitled, "The Russo-Ukrainian War Through
the Eyes of a Historian" and it is based on his book "The Russo-Ukrainian War:
The Return of History" which was published by
WW Norton in 2023. Please welcome
Professor Plokhii. [ Applause ] >> Thank you,
Professor DeGroot. Thank you for this
introduction. Thanks to all of you
for coming today. I know it's a little
bit chilly outside. So I really, really appreciate
the warmth that is here. I can feel it in
this -- in this room. So what I'm going to talk
about really will be the war, more specifically, the last
four years of the war. The war between Russia and
Ukraine started back in 2014. The all-out war, this is the
story of the last four years. And I will be talking
about that as a historian. Generally, historians are
supposed to study history, and not something that is
happening as we speak. So I'm -- I'm breaking out of
that -- of that sort of -- the limitations, maybe,
of the profession, but also something that puts
me outside of the comfort zone as someone who really
studies -- started as a historian, working on the
early modern period. One thing on the early modern
period, which was good, is that whatever you say, your
colleagues can agree or disagree with you, like
Charles Halperin, who is here, but the people who took part
in those events are gone. So you are -- you are
really -- you are quite secure that no one stands up in the
room when you are speaking and say -- and will say, I was
there and you got it wrong. So when you talk about
something that is happening today, this is certainly a
very, very different -- very different situation. We historians were trained
to study and to work on the processes that
came to an end. I will share with you that
good part of our wisdom comes from the fact that you already
know how things turned out. And when you work on something
really open ended, that challenges you, and really
certainly your professional, professional training. You encounter all sorts of
issues related to the sources. Where are the archives
of the current war? And if they are there, how
you can get access to it? How you can look at the event
as you have been trained to do from different perspectives. All of that presents changes,
but on the other hand, we historians are here in this
world also to perform a particular function. And to place something that is
happening in front of our eyes in a broader context and
broader perspective, and through that provide
an explanation. And I tried to approach this
war as a historian looking at the ways in which my training
and the discipline of history, in general, can help us to
understand what is happening in front of our eyes. And I will focus in this --
in this presentation certain things that are very, very
traditional for the discipline of history, and others that
maybe I'm trying to push the envelope a little bit and
try to use applied history to talk about today. What is quite traditional and
what I will be talking about will be also something that
belongs to the realm of intellectual history or
the history of ideas. Where the war comes from, and
what in terms of the battle of idea in represents. Another story, which is,
again, historians have been involved in telling the
stories from the start go, was the origins. One of the -- I don't want
history to be limited, and no one could ask history to
be limited to study of origins, but certainly origins is
something that was part of the historical -- the
historical craft from early on. And then the third part,
which is very important, is historians, we study, among
other things, trends, and we can also -- probably are
equipped maybe better than others to see whether these
particular events fit the trend or don't fit the trend
that existed there before. And knowing what happened or
trying to understand what happened before a
particular event, you can also maybe understand whether
this is something new or this is a continuation of something
that happened before. So if something new, probably
historians are better equipped than maybe others to
appreciate what is new and what is continued. So my book that Professor
DeGroot mentioned, the Russo-Ukrainian War, I was
struggling with all those questions, and eventually I
gave myself a sort of the -- an imprimatur to do
what I wanted to do, and I rephrased Winston
Churchill. Churchill was saying that
democracy is the worst form of government, except every
other or any other form of government, and I
decided that historians are the worst interpreters of
today, except everybody else. [ Laughter ] So that's -- that gave me --
gave me really confidence that I lacked otherwise to do
things that normally belong to the realm
of maybe government or international
relations departments. So can we -- given an
historian, as you see, I am relying on
the old-fashioned way to move slides there. I will be -- I will be
asking me to help with that. So this is -- this is the
slide where I want to start, and where I want to begin. Because in many ways, this
is -- this is the war that is very closely
associated with the figure of the President of Russia,
Vladimir Putin. It would be a mistake, of
course, to explain the war itself just through one
personality or one figure. But certainly, the impact, the
influence of Putin on this war is enormous, including --
including the way how he perceives the world and
how he perceives history. It would probably matter much
less if Vladimir Putin was not really in power for now 25
years, and if it would not have the enormous
power that he has. So then it really -- people
can have all sorts of visions about history, but it's not --
it's not as -- as important. But Putin's understanding
of history is essential for understanding the war and
the origins of this war. Before the Russian military
units started the all-out aggression against Ukraine,
on the February 24th, 2022, roughly half a year before
that, in the summer of 2021, the official website of the
President of Russia published a historical essay. How many presidents write
historical essays and then publish them? And how many presidents or
leaders then base their decisions to go to war or
not to go to war on the basis of history? And history that
they -- as Putin claimed, started in the archives,
or they were bringing him archival materials. But the case of this war in
that sense, it's -- it is quite unique. Putin is really
obsessed and possessed by a particular
type of history. For those of you who maybe
watched an interview that he gave to Tucker Carlson,
you maybe could feel that. So for the half of an hour, the
most precious time in that interview, he was discussing
the medieval Kievan Rus, and Carlson was trying
to interrupt him, knowing that he was
bringing nothing back to the United States that the
public could appreciate. And Putin kept going
from the 11th century to the 12th century, from the
12th to the 13th century. So that's just an indication
that history is not something that he's trying to use to
explain what he's doing, but something that he is
really -- believes that he's an agent of history and a
particular type of history. So the -- it's a long essay. You didn't have pre-assignment
before coming here to read this and
that material. So I will tell you
in a very few words, the essence is in the first
paragraph. And Putin says there that I told
that on a number of occasions, that Russians and Ukrainians are
one and the same people. And now I will explain you
why -- why I say that, why I believe in that and
why -- why this is true. So what that meant really, if
you translate that into plain language, is that
Ukrainians don't exist. So when Russians and
Ukrainians are one and the same people, he didn't mean
that Russians don't exist and Ukrainians are there, but he
meant -- he meant that Ukraine was not there and is
supposed -- and is not supposed to be -- to be in --
on the map. When the essay was published,
I and my colleagues had all sorts of discussions of
how to react to that. And one of them said, well,
the whole thing is so kind of ridiculous and poor, that
maybe he just worked on that during the COVID time and
then -- and then just decided to publish it in July
when every -- at the university everyone is on vacation, was
the hope that no one would actually notice that,
and review that. That was a joke. In reality, that was actually
already a statement. That was a declaration of war. That was the first missile that
was -- that was fired there. For me personally -- and can
we move to another slide? For me personally, there was
a lot of familiar in that essay, because Putin is many things,
but one thing he is not, he's not an original
historian or thinker. And what he was doing, he was
going back to the 19th century. Really being influenced by
some of the imperial authors, some of the authors from
Russian immigration, and people like
Solzhenitsyn. He was thinking about future
of Russia in terms of the 19th century imperial
concepts of Russia. And what you see on that -- on
that slide are three ladies that embody the idea
of the Russian nation of the late 19th and the
beginning of the 20th century, where it was argued
that Russian nation consisted of three tribes. One of them were great
Russians or Russians of today, another were little
Russians or Ukrainians, and then white Russians or
Belarusians, and that's what
is the poster coming from Imperial
Russia is there. You see there are three ladies,
but there is just one flag, and only one of the ladies have
a sword and a -- and a cross. So whatever it is, it is not
actually a union that of equals. There is one particular part
of that Russian nation, and that's Russians and great
Russians, that are -- are leading, that are --
and are supposed to lead. So Russian vision of history,
but also vision of the future, it's a return and going back
to the 19th century, to the concept of the
Russian nation as it existed in the 19th century, and now
with the -- with the Army, he was trying to bring that --
that Utopia, that thing from the past, thing
coming from the 19th century to bring into
the 21st century. And now we know that he is
not unique in the sense of reviving the ideas and
concepts from the 19th century and bringing them in the 21st
century, but at that time -- at that time, that was quite --
quite development. Now, one thing more that was
in Putin's article was really critique of the
Soviet Union and the Soviet policies, in
particular of the policies of Lenin, but also
of Stalin as well. Can we -- can we
get another slide? Because what -- Putin really
adopted the position that was taken by the Russian
generals of the so-called White Army, who
were defeated by the -- by the Red Army, that really
Russia is supposed to be a Russian state and -- and led
by Russians. When the Bolsheviks saved the
Russian empire from collapse, it collapsed and then they
stitched it back together, but by military force, but also
by making concessions to the nationalities. So the big crime of people
like Lenin and Stalin was not the Ukrainian
famine of '32-'33, or the Deportation of the
Crimean Tatars or the Great Terror of 1937,
the great -- the big -- the big sin was that they
recognized Ukrainians and Belarusians and
others as separate nations, that they formed and created
the Soviet Union in which there
were republics. And in that sense, they --
they eventually -- eventually also created Russian
Federation as a state with different institutions and
different borders than the borders of
the Soviet Union. It was that state, the
Russian Federation, that Yeltsin led out of the
Soviet Union, that Putin inherited, and the
state within the borders of which he doesn't really
feel comfortable or historically justifiable to
continue -- continue to rule Russia. The future of Russia is in the
Utopia of the 19th century, and Bolsheviks -- Bolsheviks
in that sense were really the destruction or the
distortion, they took Russia away
from the right path, which was -- which
was the path of the formation of big Russian nation. Can we get another slide? The irony of history, and this
is the image coming from the -- and of
the Soviet Union, the so-called Belovezha
agreement between the leaders of Russia, Yeltsin; Ukraine,
Ukrainian leader Kravchuk; and Shushkevich
of Belarus. But those were the
representatives of those three sisters that you remember
on the poster before that. So now we have three brothers,
who are signing an agreement in dissolution of
the Soviet Union. So those were the leaders
of the Slavic republics, the same republics that were,
during the imperial times, perceived as one Russian nation
dissolving the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union fell apart
one week after Ukrainian Referendum on
Independence of Ukraine, where more than 90% of those
who participated in referendum, and over 70% of eligible voters
voted to leave the Soviet Union. The question is, why dissolve
the Soviet Union one week after Ukrainian referendum? Ukrainians didn't vote on the
future of the Soviet Union. The question was whether you
support the decision of the -- your parliament, the
Verkhovna, to declare independence of
Ukraine. So the idea was,
okay, we are leaving and we are wishing you
all the best. But neither Yeltsin nor
Gorbachev really imagined the Soviet Union without
Ukraine. In telephone conversations
with the American President George H.W. Bush, Yeltsin
explained on more than one occasion that
without Ukraine, the union makes no
sense for Russia because Russia would be out
voted by the Muslim republics. By that time Balts,
of course, left. So caucuses was in
revolt, in rebellion. So there was Russia,
there was Ukraine, Belarus and Central Euasian Republics. So the idea of this cultural
and religious and other affinity
was certainly there, at least in the way how Yeltsin
was explaining that to Bush, but there was other logic
behind that because Ukraine happened to be the second
largest republic of the Soviet Union in
terms of the population, economic potential, and so on
and so forth after Russia. So with the largest bloc gone,
for Russia maintaining the Soviet Union made
no -- no sense at all. Which also means that for
anyone who tries to rebuild, reintegrate under the control
of Russia the post-Soviet space, any project of doing
that without Ukraine, the second largest bloc, also
cultural, historically and otherwise connected to
Russia, makes this project not just incomplete, but
certainly makes -- makes -- leaves a huge, huge
hole in that entire vision and entire project. And this is one of the
explanations of why we have the largest war now not only
in Europe, but in the world since 1945 happening in
Ukraine versus Georgia or versus other -- other place,
because at stake there at least for Russia -- at stake
in the contest for Ukraine is the control over the
post-Soviet space. And the status of the -- if
not superpower, then certainly great power and
regional power overall. Can we -- can we go to
another -- another slide. Thank you. So a little bit
of geography now and political geography in
particular. Before that I was -- I was
talking about history, I was talking about ideas,
but I was talking about the Russian and Ukrainian
relations since imperial times until the Soviet times. Now we are in the
post-Soviet era. And we are in the place where
I want to discuss the -- not just roots of the war,
historical roots of the war, intellectual and otherwise,
but something that can be characterized as causes. Something closer to our time,
and something more linked and connected to the
actions of today. And what we see on that
map is that there are two integrationist processes
that are taking place in the Eurasia in general, but in particular in
the areas that were part of the Soviet Union and were
under the Soviet control during the Cold War. If you listen again to Putin
now more a politician rather than an historian, his
argument would be that, well, we were provoked. We had to go to war with
Ukraine because NATO expanded, and NATO continued
its expansion, and that presented
a threat to us. That's -- that's the
argument that is there. Let me say a few words about
NATO expansion, which is -- again, this is not a map of
NATO and it changed, but basically European Union and
NATO really moves into the Eastern Europe, the parts
that were under Moscow control during the Cold War. And the logic of all of that
happening is the logic that the representatives of this
countries from Poland to Czechoslovakia, then
separately Czech Republic and Slovakia to Hungary,
they come to Washington and they knock on the doors and
say and actually open the doors, we want NATO. They are doing that, and
the world looks at them as basically being
paranoid and crazy. And they're saying,
we know history. Russia is run by Yeltsin, but
Russia was here for centuries and so on and so forth. We want actual integration
into the West. So the map is moving with NATO
moving east, but what in reality is happening, that what
was east is moving west, partially thinking and
foreseeing, to a degree, the war that Ukrainians at
that time didn't foresee. And many, many also in the west
did not foresee at that time. So that's -- that's --
that's the story of NATO. So NATO expansion is really
about parts of the former Soviet empire running
westward for cover. Whether that cover -- what
does it mean today NATO and what Article 5 means today,
this is a big question, but that at least was the
thinking at the time. Now, Ukraine didn't
apply for NATO. The majority of the population
actually didn't want NATO. But they got the war on the pretext that actually
NATO was moving into Ukraine. That's where I will use a
different -- a different skill of a historian, which
is about chronology, because one of the big ways that
we can bring some sort of order and understanding, we
historians, we can create a
chronological table. And then, wow, there are
huge discoveries, something happened actually
before what you thought what happened, and that's
about causes and other things. So if you look at the war, and
it starts -- it starts in the Crimea, annexation of
the Crimea in 2014. Russia -- it's late February
and early March of 2014, Russia takes over Crimea,
arguing against that if that doesn't happen,
the NATO bases will be on the territory
of the Crimea. This is a preventative act. Well, the reality is that what
happened in Kyiv was the -- if we can use another slide. That's come from 2004
revolution, Orange Revolution, but around 2013, that happened
in the Revolution of Dignity, and it happens over the issue
that the Ukrainian government that promised at least for one
year for Ukrainians that the country would join
the -- not European Union, but would sign association
agreement with European Union. It reversed its course
under pressure from Russia. Once the revolution chases
away the previous president, Viktor Yanukovych, who
promised and then didn't deliver on the promise and eventually
he runs -- he finds safe haven in Russia. The new government says
that we are going to sign association agreement with
European Union, and then the annexation of the
Crimea happens. So it's not
membership in NATO. It's not membership in
European Union, but it's association agreement
with European Union. The importance of it for
Russia is that any country that signs association
agreement with European Union, it can't sign equal agreement
joining any other trade union. And on the map that
you just saw before that, there was this two
integrationist projects, one in blue was about Europe and
European Union, another in yellow was about --
under different names, but basically Eurasian Union
and Ukraine is in the middle. So Ukraine signing, not
joining NATO, not joining European Union,
signing association agreement with European Union is actually
putting itself outside of the space of the
integrationist project of Putin in terms of rebuilding -- of
rebuilding the -- not the Soviet Union, not the
Russian empire in its old way, but certainly the control
over the former imperial and over former Soviet space. So the war is there to keep
the former subject, former slave escaping from --
from the camp that the master is trying to create,
rather than a threat, rather than a threat
coming from the West. I'm not naive. I have no doubt that no one in
Moscow actually was happy or celebrated about NATO borders
moving closer to Russia, but simple chronology,
looking at history from that perspective, tells
you what actually happened. And if you look then, fast
forward to the Finland joining NATO and expanding twice the
border between NATO and Russia, you would -- that is happening
already after full-scale war against Ukraine, you would
expect that if NATO is such a big issue,
not entire Army, but at least half of
Russian Army would be moved to protect your border
with NATO, but the border with
NATO is empty, the troops were drawn to
Ukraine. So what we see there is really
an attempt -- an attempt to rebuild the Russian control
over the -- over the post-Soviet space with Ukraine
being very, very important -- very important part of that --
of that entire arrangement, given its cultural, its
history -- its cultural role, proximity to Russia,
geographic importance and so on and so forth. We can move now to -- to --
this is -- this is the start of the -- of the war itself. It starts with the
annexation of the Crimea. The territorial acquisition
is not the goal in itself. The goal in itself
is different. It's keep Ukraine in the
Russian sphere of influence. Because of that, the
destabilization starts of the Ukrainian east and
south, and the war breaks out in Eastern Ukraine in Donetsk. This is clear on this map. Next slide. The war was being stopped as
the result of two sets of agreements negotiated with
the help of European Union. Minsk I and Minsk II. What -- the basic idea was there
was that Russia would control the eastern part of
Ukraine, Donetsk, but legally, it would integrate it into the
body of the Ukrainian state. And in that sense, would
actually paralyze any movement towards --
towards the West. And the position of many
European leaders, in particular, Angela
Merkel in Germany, was that we know how to deal
with Russia. We were very successful
back during the Cold War. We made business with Russia. We make money and we make
peace at the same time. That worked. The Berlin Wall is gone. So the more we integrate
Russia into -- into economic and political structures, the
more difficult it would be for Russia to start the war. So immediately after the
annexation of the Crimea, Russia is awarded by Germany
with the construction of one more pipeline,
the Nord Stream 2. The old-fashioned word
"appeasement" coming from the 1930s, certainly comes --
comes to mind -- comes to mind at that time and
at that moment. The next slide. This is the map of the war in
2022, which started the -- Putin gave the term to
that -- to that war, the special
military operation. He was not trying
to fool the world. He really was thinking about
an extended version of the Maduro-type of special
operation in Venezuela, with the use of more force,
but not enough at all to really even take over and
control Ukraine. We got -- we got the war that
now is going for four years, becoming, as I said, the
largest war in the world since 1945, if you look at the
length of the war, if you look at the number
of people involved, at casualties, when we look
at the crimes committed, if you look at the military
equipment being there and being destroyed, and so on
and so forth. So one thing is that -- why
the war renewed in 2022. One reason is that for Putin,
the situation didn't work well. The Ukraine refused to rewrite
its constitution and integrate Russian control in
territories within the borders of the Ukraine. Ukraine continued its movement
towards the west, signing association agreement
with European Union. So Ukraine was leaving the
Russian sphere of influence, and Putin thought that that
was his way to deal with the situation. The appeasement that was used
at that time by the West and in particular by European
countries and Europe, didn't work also
producing this war. So that's so far what I was
talking about was about history
and the past. I start with ideas, I continued
with the Soviet history, I looked at the geopolitics
and origins of this war. So now, I will talk about --
about something different, about what war changed using
my -- my know-how as an historian allegedly
knowing and understanding what was there before that I
will talk about, but things new. Can we get next slide? So one thing that is new, and
I will be talking about that in detail in my next
lecture -- this is a photo from the Russian occupation of the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant, is that the war in Ukraine
went nuclear already on the first day of the war
with the Russian occupation of the Chernobyl site. And then one week later,
occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that is
still under occupation. Chernobyl was today in the news
because of the Russian attack on the Ukrainian energy
infrastructure, that cut also electricity supply to
Chernobyl nuclear power plant. So this is the first time
in -- in history of wars the military attack and takeover
and battle, real battle on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia
nuclear power plant, which really puts the
entire vision and story and expectations that we
have vis-a-vis nuclear energy and saving the world from the
climate change and catastrophe with the help of nuclear, it
puts a huge question mark, and the issue is unresolved. Again, I will be happy to talk
about that in my next lecture. What -- which other
things I knew? Next slide. The war really became major
turning point in relations between Russia and Ukraine. The war started, as I
discussed at the beginning, with the idea that Russians
and Ukrainians are one and
the same people. What we see now, certainly, and
we know that you can feel with your skin in Ukraine
when you are there, the idea of not just unity, but
of proximity or anything of that
sort is gone, and it's gone for
generations to come. Ukraine fights back
and mobilized itself as a real country, that no
one expected that it had the government, the
president that doesn't flee, the Army that is there. So that page in the history of
Russian-Ukrainian relations, which, again, historically
had a lot in common, is gone. It's turned. What you see here on this
photo, the photo comes from March 2022,
downtown Kyiv, a monument to
Russo-Ukrainian friendship that was put back
in the 1980s, the last decade of the
existence of the Soviet Union. You have, as it was supposed
to be during the Soviet times, now it's not two women, but
two men, they are workers, one representing Russia and the
other representing Ukraine. And in the background, the
glorious history that Putin appeals to of the Russian
Ukrainian unity, the Pereiaslav Council
of 17th century. The guys in the background,
it's 17th century garbs, at least the way how they
were imagined in 1980s. They are there. This monument survived the
start of the War in the Crimea. So nobody touched it. Ukrainian artists were
experimenting with that. There is a huge -- you can
see there, there's an R which represents a rainbow. So they got there and put some
paint -- painted a crack in that rainbow, but
rainbow stayed. It didn't survive the first
missile attacks on Kyiv. And it's not like missile
attack hit the monument but the Ukrainians believed that
there was no place for any monument in any way
celebrating Ukraine's closeness to Russia. But again, that's just a
snapshot with every passing day. Again, if I can tell you what
I read on the social media and the words that
are being used, probably I wouldn't be allowed
to lecture in this -- in this room. Next slide, please. That's an image
coming from the past, but it's very much
about the future. That's the Berlin Wall. We don't have a physical
Berlin Wall now between Russia and Europe, but certainly --
certainly the era that started in the -- during the détente
in the early 1970s, with the Russian gas going into
the European markets. That is something that was
linked and associated really with this détente
period in the Cold War. That era is gone. And even if the war stops
today, I don't think that that will change anything either
about the issues dealing with the nuclear that
I discussed before, or the issues of relations
between Russians and Ukrainians or relations between
Russia and Europe. Europeans, especially today,
much more than in 2022, perceive Russia as --
as a real threat, as a real threat that they are
not especially, given changes in
the United States and United States policy, that
they are not -- not prepared to address. So mass rearmament is
now happening in Europe. And certainly, the markets
that are being vacated are being filled with Ukrainian --
American liquefied gas and so on and so forth. So we are -- we are dealing
with a new situation. Next slide. Where Russia is moving --
where Russia is moving east. Not for the first time in the
last -- in the last hundred years or something
like that. That image comes
from the 1950s. Russia reorients, of course,
its export of oil and gas towards China, and the war
really, really -- the big war, very interestingly started a
few weeks after Putin goes to Beijing and Xi Jinping and
him declare a new sort of the strategic partnership, which is
called No Limits Partnership. No limits that means, of
course, military components and data components
are involved. The Chinese are very careful
for a number of reasons fully supporting Russia,
but they also can't afford the Russian loss in Ukraine for
a number of reasons. So the war really put --
initiated the shift of Russia from context and close
connections with Europe that started during the last
decades of the Cold War and towards sort of alliances
that were back in the 1950s, with the difference, of course,
that now it's China that is more responsible and is in the
driving seat in that alliance, and Russia is basically more
adventurous and the -- the reckless and the member of the
alliance that is prepared to -- to blow up the entire
international order. So the role that really
belonged to China back -- back in the 1950s. All that brings me to the --
to the elephant in the room, which is the United States. Next slide. The idea that -- that China
is -- is a major long-term rival of the United States,
it's not a new idea. Certainly there, at least
since the administration of President Obama. It continued through the
presidency of first -- first presidency of Donald
Trump, then President Biden, and now continues today. But the approach is
that different American administrations take towards
China, and in that context towards Russia and in
that context over the Russo-Ukrainian
War, which is the topic of my -- today's lecture is
different. What Obama and Biden were
trying to do, they were trying actually to
build alliances. There was the idea to park
Russia and focus on China. That didn't work. So Biden, without committing
any military force or other force, was on
the diplomatic level, and in terms of the supply of
weapons, was backing Ukraine. So, again, the whole world in
crisis was something that he -- he would prefer not
to have focusing on China, but that's what happened,
and that was the Biden's China and Russia, and that
means also Ukraine policy. There were a lot -- many
components of that. Again, maybe other occasion or
if there will be questions, I can go into that. Now, next slide. The late -- the current
administration of President Trump. The policy is different. You don't build alliances. You actually question those
alliances -- I will put that in very diplomatic
way -- and you withdraw. So Venezuela, the Greenland,
the Monroe Doctrine, that is going back to the
90 years basically, and the idea of the Great
Powers. So U.S., for a number of reasons
under this administration, decided that the right
strategy in the interest of the United States
is actually to withdraw. And then since Europe and also
what is happening with Ukraine and so on and so forth is --
it's not as -- as chaotic and idiosyncratic,
I guess the terms, how it maybe looks on the
screen. There is -- there is this
overarching different -- different philosophy to the
role of the United States and the world, which, of course,
has impact globally on relations between United
States and its NATO allies. Now that Europe is buying
from the U.S. weapons and is paying for
that, but that becomes more and more problematic
for a number of reasons. And the last slide will be --
will be -- I will be circling back to Ukraine. The shift in the American
policy, of course, didn't affect anybody
more than Ukraine. The shift was really obvious. That meeting was taking place
in February -- in February of 2025. Ukraine is still
holding, it's fighting. Russian -- the war approaches
now the end of the fourth year. The Russian territorial gains
is longer than the war between the Soviet Union
and Nazi Germany. The territorial
gains are minuscule. So it's not exactly that
Russia is winning the war. The security situation in
Ukraine and in Kyiv becomes worse with
every passing day. Last night, there were mass
attacks again in Kyiv. The -- the cold, low
temperatures, it is extremely difficult, but
Ukraine is holding. So what has fallen are
the -- the alliance, the Western alliance, and it
falls not only over Ukraine, it falls also over many other
issues. Now, what is at stake for the
United States there in Ukraine? Should U.S. really care about
that at all or not? There is a number of ways
of answering this question. I will approach it and
answer as a historian. My basic answer is
this is a big war. As I said, the largest
war in the world, bigger now than Korean
War, since World War II. And it matters for the world,
for generations ahead, how wars of that
proportion end. You can forget Ukraine. You can forget Russia. You can look at some other
place in the world, it doesn't matter. The war of that proportion
really -- and who wins and who loses in this war really
defines the trajectory of the region, but also of
the world for a longer -- for a longer period of time. The shifts in the American
policy, probably they would happen one way or another,
maybe in a different way, but they happened at
the time of this war, and on the issue and key
issues of this war. The war is already changing
the world in a number of ways that I discussed, and in a
number of other ways that we can't probably
imagine today. And at stake, in that sense,
is certainly not only -- not only the future of
Ukraine, but the future of international --
international order in general. From the perspective of the
United States, I think this is -- and I understand I'm
coming from Ukraine. I'm certainly biased, and so
on and so forth, but I -- looking as a historian at the
U.S. and American foreign policy, I don't
remember reading about that, hearing about that, any
sort of the situation that we have today, when
no one asks or suggests about the American participation
in the conflict. There is a country that is now
fighting for itself, but also for the Europeans and
for the international order with the America's largest
rival during the Cold War, effectively destroying good part
of that -- of the arsenal of that country. Does that with the help of the
American weaponry, like F-16. They were not provided for a
long, long period of time. F-16 were paid, as far as
I understand, by American taxpayers
during the Cold War. So the equipment that goes to
Ukraine is not necessarily new and cutting-edge equipment. So in the era of rearmament,
that equipment would have to go and get
weaponry somewhere else. But for a number of reasons,
including the idea about viewing the role of the
United States in the world, the U.S. is actually
withdrawing from that -- from that extremely important
conflict of today. Again, it all makes sense if
you -- if you think about the policy, the future
policy of U.S. is going in the Western Hemisphere
and digging trenches here and waiting
for Chinese to come here. But it doesn't make sense
if you think about a more proactive policy, and I don't
even mention things like democracy and international
order and other things and just the -- and make
national interest the way how we can imagine. So that's -- that's where my
insights as historians end. I can tell you that looking
from a perspective of not days or weeks or months, but by
decades and centuries, I know where this
war will end. This is a classic war of the
disintegration of empires, and 85, 90% will know
how this war ends. They end with the
disintegration of empire. They end with the rise of new
nations on the map that were colored like in
red like it was the case with the British empire. What we don't know is
how long that will take. We don't know
what is the cost. The American Revolution
happened in the 18th century. The British empire was still
there up until mid-20th century. But what I know as a
historian, that you can't predict the future because
there is such thing called human agency. Which means that we as
humans, we can change things. And I hope that we all use
our time here, our resources, wisely in the interest of us
all, that we change history for the better, in the way
that would work for us all. Thank you very much
for your attention. [ Applause ] Thank you very much. If you thought that I would
leave after you applauded, that is not happening. So I was asked to suggest if
you have any questions, I will be more -- I will be more
than happy to answer them. And, again, the arrangement, I
understand that there are two microphones, one on the
left, another on the right. You can choose for political
and other reasons which one you -- which
one you prefer. All questions will be -- will
be certainly considered and dealt with and answered. >> Thank you. Thank you
for this lecture. For, like as background,
actually, I was born in Kyiv, in '70, but I left in '79,
so during the height of the Soviet regime, but I
still have friends in Kyiv that I communicate with
sporadically. Okay. So my question is -- you
know, you said -- you know, and I do -- my friend calls
Putin Satan, and I know those, you know, wounds will
last for generations on the Ukrainian side. How do Russians, you
know, see the war? Do they also feel like
the wounds will last for generations? And another kind of related
point is actually when -- in '22, when Putin invaded
Ukraine he justified it as like Nazi, denazification. And I grew up in
the Soviet regime. I remember the wounds
of World War II, the trauma was very,
very strong. And now, as you said, we pass
this huge milestone that this lasted longer
than World War II, the Great Patriotic War. So this must be like -- what
do Russians think about it, and how do they view
the whole situation? >> Thank you for
this question. It is a very important
question, because the -- the -- really, the hope for the
war coming to an end is about Russians at the
end of the day considering that that was the wrong
thing to do. And it's difficult now to
assess what people think. You can't call from
Bloomington, Indiana, to somebody in St. Petersburg, a
taxi driver and ask, what do you think about Putin? So -- but what -- what I can
say that the war produced the largest political
immigration from Russia since the Revolution of 1917. People who didn't
want to be there, disagreed and so on
and so forth, which sort of a hint of not
everyone being happy with that. The problem is, of course,
that those who are not happy are being chased out. The regime, the government,
has control to manipulate and control the public
more and more. But looking at the number of
people killed and wounded, and it's over 1 million
on the Russian side. I can't imagine that the body
bags that return from Ukraine to Russia exactly send the
same message that Russians and Ukrainians are one
and the same people. And in Russia, like in every
dictatorial regime, the only time to reassess the
course comes with the death or removal of the leader. And that was -- that was
certainly after Stalin. That was -- that was -- again,
every new leader really builds his own reputation, tradition,
destroying whatever -- whatever was done by the
previous, very different from Chinese, but that's part
of the Russian culture. So I can't imagine, as long as
Putin is there really war to be over permanently. But I also can't imagine the
war going on without Putin because the war is -- did
absolutely horrible things to Ukraine, but it didn't produce
anything good for Russia. It's going from Europe, after
300 years of Russian cultural and political orientation in
one way or another in Europe. The number of killed, the
lost prestige in the world, and so on and so forth. So there is no way of how that
can be packaged and repackaged as a big achievement
and big victory, unless really Russia is
allowed to succeed. Not only victors write
history, but victors got the first try, and again,
that's why I'm saying that a lot will depend on how the
war will come to an end. If even with that losses,
Russia succeeds in taking over Ukraine and gets strengthened,
okay, that will be presented in Russian history as a big
sacrifice and achievement and so on and so forth. But that's -- that's, I think,
would be the worst case scenario, not just for
Ukraine, but for Russia as well. >> Hi, thank you
so much, dyakuyu, for this wonderful talk. So Putin, in his various
essays, takes on a whole range of different
historical things. And it's interesting that
in his present day world, Patriarch Kirill of the
Russian Orthodox Church is such an important
domestic ally for him. So could you say something
about how -- how does Putin view the Russian Orthodox
Church in his kind of world view of Russia's
place in history? >> Well, with the collapse of
communism, what you see that, at least in public,
almost every leader of the post-Soviet space
turns one way or another, not just to historical
tradition but to religion, and does it in a public way, and
Putin is one certainly of those. For him, the Orthodoxy and the
Russian Orthodox Church, it's the part of that utopian,
imperial Russian idea. And the Russian Orthodox
Church itself, it is, in many ways, really fragment
of imperial Russia. Because under the Bolsheviks
they were not allowed to modernize, they were sort of
tolerated or barely tolerated. They really never adjusted
to the world as it was transformed in
the 20th century. The Russian Orthodox Church,
despite the fact that it's not only in Russia, and until
2000, the majority of parishes of the Russian Orthodox
Church were in Ukraine, not in Russia. It was called Russian
Orthodox Church. The communist party was called
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Changed its name from the
Russian Social Democratic Bolshevik, whatever,
party in the '20s into the old Union Party and then the Party
of the Communists, but the Russian
Orthodox Church stayed the Russian
Orthodox Church. So it's really, in terms
of its mindset, it is one institution that
preserved the Russian imperial view, and this is really very
important for Putin. Other than that, he is -- he
is using it, certainly, as an instrument. And now, you don't -- you
don't hear about that anymore, but when the war started with
the Crimea in 2014, you heard of sort of the -- I
don't know how real it was, but -- but some people were
saying that Kirill was not particularly excited about it. His vision was of the
Orthodox Vatican, where he would actually keep
expanding in the Russian -- in other former Soviet
republics. When the war produced a
situation when there is a split in the Russian Orthodox
Church, his bishops are under pressure from the
government and also from the society in
Ukraine. So it really turned him
into the Russian patriarch, creating all sorts of problems
in the Baltics, in Ukraine and
in other places. But again, if this is true, if
there was such an ambition, and it was not realized
because of the Putin's policies, that's deep in
the past. So now what we have is really
the Russian Orthodox Church does what Putin wants it to
do, and basically, it's -- it's -- it justifies through
religious terms a war, basically on another Orthodox
as Khrushchev mentioned. >> So I'd like to ask for a
little bit of your thought on the history of Ukraine,
basically the way that its politics have evolved up to
and because of this war. My perception, as somebody who
had watched Ukraine for quite a few years,
was a bit of chaos and repeated revolutions and --
and a lack of coming together of ideas that almost was
exemplified in the election of an actor who had no
political experience to become a president. What do you see specifically
with -- within Ukraine as the way that historical
events here have really reshaped Ukrainian's identity,
politics, and the way that they're handling
this war? >> Yes, thank you. I'll give you my --
my personal example. I -- since the year 2000, so now
probably quarter of a century, I write in English
and publish in English, and then -- then my works happen
to be translated into other languages,
including in Ukrainian. Before 2014, there was no
market for my work in Ukraine, in the sense that enough money
to translate and then for publishers to make
money out of that. So the expectations was always
that coming from the U.S. before that Canada, that I
would bring some subsidy. No one asks me for subsidies
since 2014, which means that the interest
in history that wasn't there before the Crimea is there. Not to brag about myself, but
my book, "The Gates of Europe" in Ukrainian translation is
now the most popular survey of Ukrainian history in
Ukraine, which I'm proud of, but I am mentioning that for
a different reason. This is the same text without
any changes that is present here in the U.S.
and in German translation and in others. So Ukrainian public
is on the same page. That's just one example, with --
so it's not just the history. A big part of history is
produced locally and consumed locally. But there is also big chunk
of the history that is at least shared understanding with --
with the neighbors and the rest of the world. And the interest in history,
that's interest that generally crosses the ethnic and
religious and other divides. Ukraine would not be there
today if it wouldn't actually be able to reimagine
its history despite Russian language,
Ukrainian language, Ukrainians Jewish and Catholic
and Orthodox, as something one
and united. So that's, it seems to me, the
biggest shift between 2014 and 2022. What is happening also
now during the war is the ethnicization
of Ukrainian identity, and to a degree history,
that wasn't there before, as a result of the war. Again, we have this -- it's
not about history scandals, but scandals, for example,
about the Ukrainian language and whether the patriotic
Ukrainian can be also speaking Russian or not. Again, I can go
on that forever. But what you see generally,
Ukraine withstood 2014 and 2022, functioned as
a political nation. Generally, you can read
all sorts of stories about political nations in the
textbooks and other places. The only place where I saw the
political nations speak in more than one
language was Ukraine. But it also, in the
conditions of the war, moves closer and closer to the
Polish model and Russian model
and Turkish model and other models
that are there. And that's -- that's, again,
the longer the war goes, probably the stronger this
process would be there. The blogs, the history blogs
exploded, something that I remember six, seven years
ago, I was kind of going to Ukraine, giving interviews
and pushing, okay, we need public -- we need
history that people can read, can relate, and so on
and so forth. And it's like a different
age, a different era, and now so old-fashioned and out
of touch with what is happening in the country, that's -- that
it's, again -- people are doing all sorts
of popular history things that they didn't do before. So I would say, it's the
dominant trend, it's a political history of a
political nation, with the elements towards
ethnicization, especially in the conditions
we are in. >> Next question. So large portions of modern
Russian territories used to belong to
China in the past. So Chinese are very
well aware of this. You made predictions that
Russia is likely to collapse with probability of 85%,
we just don't know when. If that were to happen or if
that could be triggered by China reclaiming those
territories, so what are -- what are the chances you
would assign to that type of scenario? Thank you. >> Yeah, by -- by -- even by
American standards, those are huge territories
in the Russian Far East. It goes back to the history of
the Second Opium War in China and Russia moving up to defeat
in the Crimean War eastward and so-called
unequal treaties. At least two were signed
there, and from time to time that pops up. The Soviet Union and China
almost -- almost went into the nuclear war in the late '60s
over the border dispute. Chinese don't
forget about that. From time to time, they would
appear maps where that part of Russia has been colored and
named -- and the Chinese names would be given. So the issue is there. Whether that is the issue that
will topple somehow the -- the China, China, Russia relations,
in the foreseeable future, I doubt it. It will come back, but I don't think it will come
any time soon. The alliance is very much in
the interest of both countries at that time and both
leaders at that time. So I don't expect that to
become big issue any time soon, but I also don't expect
it -- it to disappear from the political agenda all
together. There are also things that,
again, threaten that alliance, which are of the same kind
that was in the 1950s, and that's the issue of
the lack of equality. The Chinese Communist Revolution
was first and foremost a national and
anti-imperialist revolution. And Mao wasn't happy
with Stalin, and especially Khrushchev,
telling him as a junior partner what to do,
what not to do. So now one way or another,
Russia is a junior partner after centuries of looking
down at the Chinese. How far that story can go
without actually producing some sort of pushback,
I don't know. Eventually that's -- that --
traditionally, both groups looked at each other with not
just a lot of suspicion, but a lot of disrespect. But, again, short
term, five, ten years, I think there's too much
common interest. It's also interesting that
back in the 1990s Zbigniew Brzezinski actually
predicted that scenario, writing about the Russia,
China and Iran alliance based on grievances
toward the West. I read that in the 1950s, and
I thought, okay, this is just attempts to predict the
future is complete nonsense. I read it now, and
I think oh, my gosh. He knew something
that I didn't know. Thank you. [ Off microphone comment ] >> Okay. First one, actually, is in a
sense a follow-up on that one. You mentioned in passing, that
you said China cannot afford to let Russia lose this war. Could you elaborate on why? And if I could ask a second
unrelated question, so you emphasized
that for Russia, Ukraine had a unique status; that is, losing Ukraine was
something very special that Russia -- Putin, at any
rate, could not let happen. However, in much of Eastern
Europe today, there are a lot of folks
asking, will we be next? The Finns are asking it, the
Estonians are asking it, the Pols are asking it, the
Moldovans are asking it, will we be the next target? If in the, perhaps unlikely
event, that Russia -- that Putin is able to say we
won, that it was worth it, that this was a victory, will any of these other
countries be next? >> Well, regarding China not
being able to afford the Russia losing the war, I
didn't mean that in terms of money. I think they can afford that. But it's the issue
of geopolitics. There is this anecdote, which
I understand is true about one of the Chinese
officials commenting, probably to the U.S.
representatives -- or maybe to European,
I don't remember. But the argument was that U.S.
wants us to help us to kind of defeat Russia so that the U.S.
would be able to focus on us. So the -- as long as Russia
attracts and destructs and all that attention
and is ally of China, and is supplying China with
cheap oil and gas and things like that, that's --
that's in the interest of China. China was not really
specifically interested in that war because there are
also losses coming with that. And they are very careful,
in terms of not -- with the American sanctions,
not to suffer because of that. They are interested in taking
over the international order but not changing it because
it works, and trade and otherwise, they learned how
to operate in that environment. It becomes much more difficult
to get to -- to Europe. So my understanding is I take
at the face value statements coming from Beijing that they
were not inspiring this war, and they are not particularly
interested in it. But once it happened, one
thing that they can allow to do that for prestige reasons
and others, is for its ally, which is de facto ally
to lose in this war. That would reflect
badly on them. In terms of other -- other
countries of Europe and what can happen, not
just -- could happen, not just as the result of the
Russian victory in the war, but even the war being stopped,
many are concerned that Russia can actually use
that very same -- very same armies to go
after softer targets. And already, in the fall,
Putin was, of course, testing the NATO unity,
attacking Poland, and there were cyber attacks
and the drones attacks. And in the fall, you could
not -- at least a couple of my flights were canceled
because there were drones, right, in Germany
and other places, and at least there was no
visible response. So now with Greenland,
what is NATO, right? And the NATO is as good as
the decision -- or as the readiness of the United
States to really get involved. So these countries are now,
and in the last week, much more in danger than
they were before of that, because the alliance is
as good as the other guy believes that the alliance will
act together. If there is no, that sort of
assumption or expectation that means you can go. So I also just admitted, like
with Brzezinski, I thought, okay, what he is
talking about? I was even two years ago,
I was look -- I was very skeptical about
real concern in Poland, that they can be next and so on
and so forth, but now I think they were right,
that it is -- it is a real, certainly, concern, and
also for the Baltic states. You look at their territory,
it just -- they don't have the -- the benefit of
Ukraine that you can retreat relatively deep into your own
territory. There is nowhere -- there is
nowhere to retreat there. So -- but, yes, many things
that I looked at them critically in disbelief now,
I'm realizing that I was naive and not -- not people who are
predicting this kind of -- even not worst case scenario,
but predicting those scenarios that really now are
being materialized. So that's how I look at it. Thank you. Well, thank you for the
questions from the left and from the right. [ Laughter ] And thank you.
Thank you for coming. And, again, if you are
interested in a really interesting topic about the
future of nuclear, please come back. Thank you. [ Applause ]