Lex Fridman Podcast
#444 – Vejas Liulevicius: Communism, Marxism, Nazism, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler
Fri, 20 Sep 2024
Vejas Liulevicius is a historian specializing in Germany and Eastern Europe, who has lectured extensively on Marxism and the rise, the reign, and the fall of Communism. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep444-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/vejas-liulevicius-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Vejas's Courses: https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/vejas-gabriel-liulevicius Vejas's Books: https://amzn.to/4e3R1rz Vejas's Audible: https://adbl.co/4esRrHt SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: AG1: All-in-one daily nutrition drinks. Go to https://drinkag1.com/lex BetterHelp: Online therapy and counseling. Go to https://betterhelp.com/lex Notion: Note-taking and team collaboration. Go to https://notion.com/lex LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex Eight Sleep: Temp-controlled smart mattress. Go to https://eightsleep.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) - Introduction (08:48) - Marxism (36:33) - Anarchism (51:30) - The Communist Manifesto (1:00:29) - Communism in the Soviet Union (1:20:23) - Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin (1:30:11) - Stalin (1:37:26) - Holodomor (1:51:16) - The Great Terror (2:04:17) - Totalitarianism (2:15:19) - Response to Darryl Cooper (2:30:27) - Nazis vs Communists in Germany (2:36:50) - Mao (2:41:57) - Great Leap Forward (2:48:58) - China after Mao (2:54:30) - North Korea (2:58:34) - Communism in US (3:06:04) - Russia after Soviet Union (3:17:35) - Advice for Lex (3:25:17) - Book recommendations (3:28:16) - Advice for young people (3:35:08) - Hope PODCAST LINKS: - Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 - Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips
Full Episode
The following is a conversation with Wejas Lulevicius, a historian specializing in Germany and Eastern Europe. He has lectured extensively on the rise, the reign, and the fall of communism. Our discussion goes deep on this, the very heaviest of topics, the communist ideology that has led to over 100 million deaths in the 20th century. We also discuss Hitler, Nazi ideology, and World War II.
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This episode is brought to you by AG1, an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. Speaking of peak performance, I'm trying to figure out in my life how many times a week to train jiu-jitsu. There's a long stretch in my life where jiu-jitsu was a big part of my life and I would often train twice a day.
And basically my life was about sort of recovery from that training session. And during the recovery, I would be doing sort of the deep study or the deep work of programming for my PhD and then beyond. And it might sound counterintuitive, but when you're so... passionately pursuing a thing and it becomes such a big part of your day, it's actually much easier to integrate it into your life.
And in fact, your body gets accustomed to that kind of hardness of training, if you're doing it correctly in terms of nutrition and in terms of avoiding injury. In fact, I never got any major injuries, knock on wood, any sort of breaking of anything doing, you know, I don't know how many years, over 20 years, 25 years.
And I find that now that jiu-jitsu is a much, much smaller part of my life, it actually does become a different puzzle. It's a puzzle of how to avoid injury, how to still have fun, but also how to keep growing and learning and adapting to the changing environment of grappling, no-geek grappling especially. So it's been a fascinating puzzle to try and solve.
Back to AG1, they'll give you one month's supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com slash lex. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H-E-L-P, help. They figure out what you need and match it with a licensed therapist in under 48 hours.
I remember, speaking of jiu-jitsu, one of the tougher things mentally for me, for anyone that does jiu-jitsu, that's one of the wonderful benefits you get from it is you get humbled. And there's all kinds of ways to get humbled. But there's just some training sessions. And it might not have to do with the skill of the people you're training with.
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