Dwarkesh Podcast
Stephen Kotkin — How Stalin Became the Most Powerful Dictator in History
10 Jul 2025
The Stephen Kotkin episode. Kotkin is arguably the world’s foremost expert on Joseph Stalin and has written a massive 2-volume biography on him (with a 3rd volume in the works).No other individual had more of a profound impact on the 20th century than Stalin. He held the power of life and death over every single person across 11 time zones, and he killed tens of millions of people, utterly consumed by an ideology aimed at building paradise on Earth.And, he was one half of the biggest and most consequential military confrontation in history (even if Hitler didn’t prove to be his match).Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Sponsors* Lighthouse is THE fastest immigration solution for the technology industry. All they need is your resume or LinkedIn profile to tell you which visas you’re most eligible for, and they’ll send you this eligibility document for free, no commitment required. Get started today at https://www.lighthousehq.com/ref/Dwarkesh.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.Timestamps(00:00:00) – Was the tsarist regime the lesser of 2 evils?(00:23:45) – The peasants brought Lenin to power, then he enslaved them(00:37:38) – Why did so many go along with enforced famine and the Great Terror?(01:02:26) – Today’s leftist civil war(01:13:01) – Doesn’t CCP deserve credit for China's growth?(01:35:13) – Why didn't somebody just kill Stalin?(01:52:45) – Overcoming the pathologies of communism with tech: USSR vs China Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Full Episode
My guest today is Stephen Kotkin, who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of two-thirds of his three-volume Stalin biographies. The first one, Stalin Paradoxes of Power, the second one, Stalin Waiting for Hitler. Thank you for coming on my podcast.
Thank you for the honor of the invitation.
Let's begin with the Tsarist regime. So first question, how repressive was the Tsarist regime actually? Because presumably the motivation behind the revolution is to get rid of this autocracy. But you just have these examples of these, Lenin's brother tries to kill the Tsar and he himself is writing these long manifestos about taking down capitalism and overthrowing the government.
And him and people like Stalin are just in exile in Siberia, living off government money, robbing banks, small shenanigans. Honestly, it sounds more forgiving than many countries today. So how bad was it really?
So you have to put yourself back in the time period to judge the level of repression based upon what norms were, what other regimes did, rather than take the 20th century regimes as the guide and go back. But we need to widen the aperture a little bit here. So this is the czarist regime's problem, right? It needs to be able to compete in the international system.
That means it needs a modern military and modern industry to underwrite that modern military. So it needs armaments. It needs steel. It needs chemicals. For that, you need workers. So you want the workers... only to work in the industry. You don't want them, for example, to have a labor movement or to go on strike or to have ideas about how politics should be organized.
Similarly with the intellectual side, you need the engineers. You need the engineers in order to design and build the modern attributes that you need to compete as a global power. but you don't want those educated people to have their own ideas and values about politics, about whether you'd want an autocratic government like the Russian regime has, or you'd want some other type of government.
So all of these countries, in the modern period have this dilemma. Importing modernization, but keeping out the political side, the value side that goes along with that. So they need to have some way to repress and control the working class organization movement stuff, and the university educated intellectuals. That's a problem we still have today. The Iranian regime now has that problem.
The Chinese regime in Beijing has this problem. The Soviet Union had that problem. Contemporary Russia has that problem. How do you bring in modernity, meaning you have tanks, you have airplanes, or you have A.I., But keep out, for example, separation of powers, freedom, property rights, all the things that undermine your dictatorial rule.
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