Transcripts For CSPAN2 Joshua Yaffa Between Two Fires 20240713

Industry, americas cabletelevision company, as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Reading everybody. Welcome to politics and prose. Im bradley graham, a coowner of the bookstore along with my wife lissa muscatine. While theres certainly been a lot of news this week, much of it of course about the start of Donald Trumps trial in the senate, but some important things have been happening in russia as well, particularly an announcement by Vladimir Putin shifting Greater Authority to parliament which has left many wondering what this means about putins on plans to relinquish the presidency, or not, in a few years. We are especially fortunate to have with us this evening an expert on putins russia, joshua yaffa, who is the moscow correspondent for the new yorker. Yorker. Hes been covering russia for much of the past decade, and his new book between two fires offers a truly fascinating and revealing look at the impact of the putin era has had on, above all, the nations psyche and the moral struggles and calculation that Many Russians confront. Josh has written a very nuanced portrait of russia, nothing like the simplistic view of that country as an oppressed people lorded over by a kgb trained dictated. Josh describes the people who is also in the middle between oppressor and oppressed, wrote to compromise and accommodation with the state but still nimble and resourceful enough to try to turn the system to some advantage mixed results. In this book he highlights the stories of a number of individual russians who struggle to balance the street and often arbitrary demands of a modern authoritarian regime with their own personal desires and consciousness. Among the people he writes about are the director of the countries Main Television channel, an orthodox priest, a chechnya and human rights activist, and a crimean zookeeper, plus several others. Hes telling these cases that example fisa persistence of a russian archetype, the wily man, the leading sociologist once put it, someone prone to adapt to a repressive system i going along with it while also trying to circumvent its rules. Josh interest in russia goes back two decades picky started learning Russian College and first visited it as as a studen the summer of 2001 and getting a masters degree in journalism and International Affairs he worked of it as an associate editor at Foreign Affairs and they moved to moscow eight years ago. He reported from the first to the economist and several other publications before landing at the new yorker in 2015. Josh will be in conversation here this evening with julia ioffe, a a russian born americn journalist who herself spent time covering russia for the new yorker as well as Foreign Policy between 20092012. In the years since, she has written for the new republic, the atlantic and currently covers National Security and Foreign Policy for gq magazine. Ladies and gentlemen, please join in welcoming both josh and julia. [applause] hello, everyone. Thank you so much for the wonderful introduction. Thank you, everybody for coming out tonight to see the wonderful josh yaffa. Josh and i go back quite a number of years, especially the times when josh showed up in moscow to get his accreditation at the Foreign Ministry from Foreign Affairs magazine when i was accredited from Foreign Policy magazine and they said, josh yaffa argue a girl . Anyway, josh, this congratulations on what is a really terrific and important book. As we were talking backstage i was thinking im so glad youve written of this because we read so many books about putin. Weve also read so many books about and articles about the dissidents, opposition and we dont, thats like maybe 10 of the population. We dont hear a lot about the people who are in between who make do, who get by. And as a russia watcher im so glad you have written is because its such a rich topic ottawa to ask you about why you decide to write about this about why and where the idea came from. Thanks for the generous introduction and thanks to you all for being here today. The idea came to me slowly as i found i wasnt exactly able to capture what i was seeing and feeling about russia. Maybe because i was in understanding the whole picture first myself when i arrived two russian with that dichotomy that you mention of looking for the oppressors and looking for the oppressed and i do want to label anyone stalin or neo, and that makes for Good Journalism to a point, starting out with the same thing which is good. But with time i realized that i wasnt doing justice to the country come to the people, to place that i was actually beginning to understand it and there was a lot left out of the russia story. In fact, the majority, the real russia story was left out of the picture. I didnt totally have the conceptual framework for understanding what russia was then, if it wasnt this battle perpetual into paternal unavoidable battle between putin and the opposition or whatever form that takes threat russian history. And so the prism of the wily man which we can talk about it a bit which takes up much of the prologue of the book was away for making sense of what was going on in Russian Society in helping me understand the way that most people like people everywhere in fact, this is not unique to rush and that was the other i do want to say inside a cousin so obvious and banal to a certain degree, but maybe underappreciated by me was how much the dynamics that guy peoples lives in russia are ultimately so familiar, so universal that people are simply trying to get my come to make do, who have some quite noble or at least understandable ambition for the life and what they want to accomplish, and set about doing so in whatever realities they happen to be in. They cant change that larger macro reality but they can try and through compromise and this idea of why yumminess, get accomplished what they can and in so doing oftentimes they change to the process of those compromise and an aggregate society certainly changes over time. Is also i think we were all drawn to the story of oppressed and oppressor because its an easy story but its a sexier story, koffler, also the prism that we see get from which we sit here in the west, right, in many countries, there is a dictator of Saddam Hussein and theres Moammar Gadhafi and all people who are against him good because theyre against gadhafi they must be good and virtuous. Some elect Aung San Suu Kyi happens and we dont know where to put her. It is give you some insight into why things like that happen . No but it made me realize the more interesting for me field of journalistic inquiry was exactly that gray zone thats oftentimes left unexplored but that just came an interesting psychological i guess the problem for me to understand how it is that individuals navigate it, the circumstances and the characters in the book i purposely chose people who i at least couldnt come to some final conclusion about, with a good or bad . They were people who defied my attempts at categorization. I would welcome other peoples choice and that regard. I would argue they are objectively on categorize a bowl. They were by me and thats what interested me and thats how you ended up in the book. I was searching for the characters where even after spending how many hours with them over months, in some cases years, i still couldnt put them in a box of with the doing something noble or venal . What did he be committed or criticized . I wasnt sure myself and it was important thats why landed with each of the characters rather than the experience of the characters itself, didnt allow me to reach some kind of conclusive moral position. Before we get deeper into this, do you want to outline i think youre going to read something about what the wily man is or who he is or she is . Ill be up page and half or so from the prologue. At the start of 2012 i moved back to moscow to work as a journalist covering russia for foreign audiences at the economist and was time for the new yorker. In the western imagination rush is a nation held captive by a dictator interested only in his own power and profit. As the story goes putin lords over population of one and 45 Million People trapping them in a cage welded shut by propaganda and oppression. Yet over the course of several years as i reported on a time of major historical turmoil and change for russia. Street protests the winter i write, extravagant preparation for the toy 14 Winter Olympics in sochi, the annexation of crimea, the standoff with the west over the war in ukraine, follow from allegations of meddling inclusion in the 2016 u. S. President ial election and the combined total of sanctions and economic crisis. I met ordinary russians who showed no signs of some of being held against their will. These are not necessarily enthusiastic supporters or even people who voted for him. Instead they treated the putin state as a given, neither good nor bad, but simply there. Like an element in the earths atmosphere and then when i constructed lives around it. Governments exist in america and europe, as all manner of external structures and constraints that people, myself included, was constantly navigate. The pressure of conformism is universal and ever present, a feature of existing in the world no matter where you find yourself. What the presence of the state and the aura of inevitability of its demands struck me as particularly a cute and russia one could not live in ignorance or indifference to the urges and caprices of the state. In fact, it was to advantage to guess what it wanted from you and to deliver that were also been clever enough to extract some benefit for yourself. This, roughly speaking, is the predicament of levada wily man. Try to being a sociologist who came up with the concept and as a and 2000. From the state contains both the threat of great hardship and the promise of incomparable opportunity. I cant understand that in russia the two forces state and citizen, speak in dialogue, conversational timber often missed by the foreign ear. Gudkov who became a respected sociologist imposter in its own right wrote that for Many Russians quote the state is not simply a technical apparatus of largescale administration what a symbolic institution, embodying and reproducing the basic understanding of human nature. The state takes on almost pantheistic importance, though made by man in his image it is also an omnipresent force whose power exceeds that of its creator. In moscow and in my travels around the country i met fiercely proud and brilliant men and women, activists, economists, journalists, this is owners who believe the best if not the only way to realize the vision was in concord with the state. It was hard to believe they were wrong, nor was i confident i would choose any differently. There was my friend with a graduate degree from oxford who can back to moscow to take a job in a state run think tank, a place were smart Young Professionals thought up good ideas. Half of which were implemented and the other half of which those with more worrying political implications were discarded. I would periodically have lunch with youth activist who would been unable to resist the offer to take a seat in parliament, where he was quickly told to Vote Along Party Lines as the kremlin dictated or risk losing the funding for his youth programs. For a while the most fashionable job in moscow was working on statefunded urban beautification projects, expanding pedestrian zones, renovating city parks, launching bike sharing programs, rethinking public transport routes. Such Initiative Made the city undeniably more pleasant and humane. With time similar efforts expand to other cities around the country. Even in the absence of larger democratic reforms, if anything, russias politics tacked in an opposite, unmistakably regressive direction. It cities became more desirable and enjoyable places to live. Time and again the referendum on compromise that repeated at regular intervals. This harnessing of the resources and power of institutions to achieve something good in you. Although its an unhelpful metaphor to understanding prudence rush i found myself returning to one thing they learned in the camps. If you are stuck inside an unjust system isnt cheating it a bit here and there for your own purposes entire lee irrational virtuous response . Maybe there are no good answers and the possibility captured is saying measuring between two fires, the condition of being stuck in the middle of two opposing forces bigger than yourself. Making it out the other side was just about the best outcome available. The more i thought it and wrote about the ways in which people actually live and work in prudence russia, the more i realized it was largely impossible to separate them into two camps, the oppressed on the oprah service. Yes, there are obvious victims and those whose resolute unyielding positions brought them great frustration and hardship, just as there were corrupt and sadistic to use the states authority nearly to line their pockets or who got off on petty cruelties. Most of the people i encountered were neither. Theres strivers, nimble and resourceful he usually set out with virtuous and understandable motives what fascinated me were the compromises required in bringing those initial motives to life and how over time those concessions can change a person in the very rationale that motivated ones actions in the first place. Thank you for that. So come i see some people shaking their heads about some of the compromises you described and i just want to start by saying or asking you about what you said earlier where this is not a phenomenon you need to rush and on. We seen this under the Trump Administration that people who are very much against him, a lot of people who were never trumpeters, who thought if i could help the country, how do you see come elected you come down on any side of come aware of the redlines for any of these people . Are there are monetary get this concept a little bit more. Like, what is the line between somebody who is coopted and a collaborator . Do you need sure, you definitely need them and i applaud them and they have my admiration. My eye have no beef with them, the opposite, held them in great esteem. I just dont think they are necessarily the most effective or less journalistic prisms for making sense of russia. Not is representative. As far as where the redlines lie, in this book i purposely didnt draw them, that is different than what i might say about my own life and my own political and social context. I think there are interesting parallels between the kinds of compromises are described in the book and the reason people go for them in the first place what theyre hoping to achieve and what they think they can achieve and where they are right where compromise does yields at least some version of the thing they were searching for and where goes totally awry or that they themselves emerge. Sort of squeezed and jaded from the process they are not the same process person they were when they went in. The big difference that i see and may be you see more in the audience can name some also is the singular role that the state plays in russia that thankfully does not exist here. There is a really welcome degree of diversity in American Social Economic Life outside of the state. In russia that is not really the case. That makes this question of compromise more inevitable than it is here. I think here i can understand it but it is not as if there really wasnt any other choice for person x or y realizing their motives or their professional ambition or whatever. One fact that really struck me so simple and obvious but yet it wasnt until it was pointed out to me was what i learned when i was reporting the chapter about the theater director who was and is a very celebrated avantgarde experimental director who for a time when the putin state had shortlived interested in supporting the avantgarde and you state money to put on some remarkable productions, interestingly many of which were implicitly or explicitly critical of the very state that was paying for them. But as one of his friends said to me about why he wouldve done this, why he wouldve put his hand out and taken state money from the government that he found objectionable at least in the person said in russia, you dont have the choice of making a movie with state funding or without state funding. That would be an easy choice. Make it without state funding and your conscious is clean. Thats not really the offer on the table. The offer on the table is do you want to make a movie or not. And if you want to make movie there is really only woo one way to do that currently in russia and when you put the question that way it becomes a lot harder and certainly impossible for me to sit and judge him taken money from the kremlin to make these movies. Hes a film director who was born theater and stage director born in a certain time and place. He only has one shot at a prime productive years of his career, why shouldnt he make the kind of films that he wants to make . And this is more of a comment than a question, but i have been surprised personally to come back from russia to the states where russian dissidents and journalists are lauded as heroes and martyrs because they stand up to the state because they refused to make the kinds of compromises you describe in your book. Yet come as soon as things get a little bit difficult here, you see so many people making like running to make compromises that are so much the bars so much lower. The stakes are so much lower. It is unlike to go to jail do i not good go to jail, do i get killed or not get killed dislike, can i pay my mortgage and have a really nice lifestyle or not pay my mortgage and have a slightly lesser lifestyle and they are more than willing to make that compromise. So to turn that into a question is, you live in both worlds, you straddle both worlds, the u. S. And russia, do you understand why we fed us those two extremes in a place like russia . We are obsessed with hooton. All we want to know what he is thinking, what he wants, what he said what it means and then the hero martyrs, why we are not interested in come i hope people are more interested in by your book because you have made it so interesting but you have an insight now as to why we fetishize those two extremes . I think that is our narrative in our narratives anywhere that its going back to greek literature, just the idea that the antihero and clearly defined roles is more digestible and understandable so, im not particular how that is to russia so putin makes it so easy, he such a perfect comic book super villain that it is hard to resist the urge to make every story about him because Stories Framed around him are so good, theyre so juicy, they sell well and are fun to write and he makes it too easy im beginning to expect by design, hes very happy with that. Arrangement in his kind of positioning in the politics through that. But im not sure how particular it is to russia despite putin occupying i think particular place in our collective geopolitical imagination. So, do you think because so much of the contemporary russia revolves around hooton in the state that he embodies and there is isnt an obvious ideology like there was in the soviet union you mentioned is being which i would be great if you could explain, do you think that being a standin for a state ideology, do you think it makes it easier for people to compromise . Maybe explain. We agree, it essentially means a state for all intensive purposes, someone who places the state in an elevated position cedes certain interests and privileges to the state above those of the individual and things the state interest take primacy over the interest of the individual and that seems to be very much how putin sees the world the collapse of the soviet union was a great catastrophe not because he was a committed marxist, but because the center of state power grew feeble, we can collapse from within and that is a great tragedy as far as putin understands it. And Something Like constantin ernst, the head of china one who i write about a one of the chapters who is an interesting guy because he has this background during this because i hit be hauteur who is making shows about german art house films as well as wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket and with long hair grew into being the premier and the most powerful propagandist of the putin era. But for him thats a fascinating transformation for me and one he takes no small amount of pride in. He still likes to position himself as this counterculture rebel even though he wields power over the countries with the largest reach. There is some degree of continuity may be less contradiction or compromise in his case because he is someone despite his taste in our house film and choosing to put offbeat, quirky American Television series, fargo on prime time and channel one, he never stopped believing in the central or premier authority of the state pray for him and thats not a contradiction. Thats what makes him interesting to me, something that a friend of his told me for my profile of the chapter of him thats about him in the book, he said ernst is an intellectual and an s state, but he is no liberal. And i have to sit with that thought for a minute because actually in my life those three terms are often interchangeable lower collapsible into one entity. But they havent been historically in european or american culture. And since you have mentioned ernst and i am sure a lot of you read the excerpt to the profile of constantine ernst, the director channel one and the new yorker, couple weeks ago. I thought he was an interesting choice because this is a bit of a criticism come i did not see what compromise he was making. He loved films, having an aesthetic is not really in ideology. And he seemed to me like he was like a karl rove of the early Putin Administration who love tupac and obama as stylistic choices but came from that generation born in the early 60s that was so absolutely; they just saw it as the status something to be milked and like you paid lip service to whatever ideology you want but you get yours. So, what compromise was ernst making . I think is compromises you say it was not necessarily political or moral come i dont think he was in any conflict with himself. It really is a stylistic or static compromise especially after the annexation of crimea and the outbreak of war and all that has followed that is russias politics have really curdled into something quite aggressive and inward looking and suspicious of the outside world, suspicious of cosmopolitanism and the values that are ernst wants undo down still holds dear. His channel has been forced to adopt certain stylistic tropes that i know he must find distasteful. You cant be a loyal foot soldier in the crimmins propaganda war and maintain these highest static high intellectual standards on the channel. I will say he has kept to channel one a little bit was covered in mud than the other two state channels and thats interesting. Nonetheless there is something about his stewardship of the channel that makes it a little less gross and sulfurous than the programming on some of the other channels. But they are still a fullfledged beer chess participant in the crimmins information war. And he knows he has no choice. When duty calls that is what the times required. I suspect that deep down he would rather be spending his nights picking which indie art house film does he want to buy the rights to to air on prime time on channel one rather than having to defend egregiously fake segments that end up on his network like the story of this crucified boy in Eastern Ukraine who turned out to be completely invented fake news scandal for him that he had to spend some weeks and months and again with me, explaining and defending. I know that its not the position he would like to be in. Sue mike and good on you for pressing him on that. Since we are on the ernst, more questions on him. One, when you wrote about sochi that incredible, elaborate display of culture he put on you to not mention that one of the rings did not open which became a mean meme and trope for everything thats wrong with the government. How do you explain that . Make thats a function of no greater editorial, but the sole decision on my part and if anything of what included this malfunction of the ring during the opening ceremonies which was otherwise this really incredible spectacle that was welcomed by all Russian Society including opposition figures sue mackey but, when the ring did in open and this was seen as the one embarrassing snafu in an otherwise glorious and successful production ernst himself made fun of it and in the closing ceremony he had one of the rings for a second also not open, wink at the audience are not flash and limited. So that struck me as an instrument interesting queso ernst having that degree of russian power and russian official that sort of selfdeprecation and irony are not features you normally see with people who occupy those positions of power in russia sue mike thats a great detail in anecdote. He mentioned this in the book, its also part of how the state maintains its image and its legitimacy. It has people like you on tv and it has these winks and nods at their mistakes which were not totally dumb, we have some press, we are nice to foreigners which lead me to ask, why did you go on when a lot of our friends i think would say like to legitimize them, dont go near it, what was that choice like for you and to describe that experience. The choice was easy. I would welcome more except criticism of the moral defensibility of that choice but i just wanted to see what the factory floor of the sausage factory look like. Here i wasnt studying ernst watching so much of channel one contemporary in the a sleep going back and watching old clips, watching the very show, time will tell, its a kind of Jerry Springer about politics i guess is the best way to say it, this is shout fests type of show but about syria, however weird that sounds has a concept. The syria kit pregnant . [laughter] a print paternity test in the commercial break. When they invited me on the show and theyre constantly as you are alluding to inviting any come a living breathing american within 100mile radius of moscow because theyre not that Many Americans who speak russian who are willing to be beat like a Birthday Party pinata by every guest who wants to step up and have a whack over the course of the hour. But i was for reportorial purposes i guess you could say. Because i wanted to know what it was like on set. I wanted to know what the hosts were like in the producers were like and what it felt like to be at the center. Of that spectacle. And, it was as i expected, my function there was to be the readymade order stand and bill in on whatever those tapic was in this avatar for america. I was always reduced to josh the american, the notion that my own views and politics, the politics of the new yorker miter actually of certain questions to be in total opposition to the reigning official american position whatever is the american position that is sort of lost because of the continuity of power at this. Of russian over 20 years this notion that there could be this total of uturns and official policy. Contradictions within one administration. But i was there just is standin, avatar for america when whatever the topic wasnt however america needed to be used as the bogeyman. I did not expect much else and i treated it like both a productive reportorial exercise and something comical that would later be a good story with you and everyone here. In that sense it served its purpose. What was interesting is that night i went to go see one of the host of the show. A guy named was a former soviet paratrooper who served in afghanistan in this nononsense tough guy who was the most crass and overthetop and he wants tried to punch another american in the middle of the show, not me but he likes to throw elbows to mix it up on the show. And i went to see him one night to have a conversation oneonone, no cameras. It was never to be or anything and he was really thoughtful and calm. We disagreed on substance on just about everything but you did not try to choke me. There were no antics. He did not interrupt me. We sent talked for three hours. At the end of it i told him after a new home i was surprised by the tenor of this conversation like this is kind of nice, normally when im on the show youre interrupting me, shouting at me and calling me names and here we just had nice talk and he says Something Like hoots Something Like, people dont go up to boxers on the street and asked them why theyre not punching them in the face. When im in the ring im doing one thing and when im out Walking Around the street im doing another. And in that come i dont know how is that any different than posts on fox news or msnbc . I dont know its a job and you have to inhabit the character but i think there was a heightened degree of both showmanship and cynicism in that statement may. Fascinating. And while we have you and can we go a little bit more behind the scenes . How did you decide which characters were going to be in the book, who was left on the cutting room floor . I think people love to hear about the process and the decisions that remain. I did think better bid in the beginning like a casting call, who are going to be my characters and how would i populate the book and who did i want to follow. I thought about it in a few different lenses. For a few different criteria in mind. One i wanted a representative across sample of people whose experiences are professes god at a lot of different aspects of russia that i thought were important or interesting. So, a new i wanted someone from media couldnt get any better than ernst, the head of channel one. So there was a pretty easy box to check once it seems he was in. I knew i wanted a priest, someone to represent the Russian Orthodox church, that actually was one of the longest amount of time for me to find the right priest, thats a world they know relatively less about just by the nature of my job and living in moscow, i ended up knowing people in media and state media and knowing how that world works. I didnt really know much about the Orthodox Church and i had to rely on the beginning they just knew who the characters were an initial criteria for anyone was they had to have experience in some way or could reflect on the question of compromise. So, i was already narrowing from the very beginning my prison pretty severely. And down the line anyway needed someone from chechnya and reflect on the memory. I ended up on that focusing on one individual but an institution, a museum outside the city of perm that was one of the only museum in all of russia is the only museum or memorial complex on the actual site of a former prison camp and all of russia. Theres no other auschwitz style memorial complex museum on the actual site. And so, i wanted to capture that wide range of russian life and also geographically i wanted there to be as little moscow as possible. Moscow is inevitable because its such a centralized place so a lot of what is happening in sub happening in moscow but i wanted to resist the temptation of all of my characters who live and work in moscow. In the last important criteria for me was when then i alluded to at the beginning which is that i wanted to find people whose compromises were somehow confounding to me that i couldnt solve them or answer them and i did not know as i said where i landed on the moral permissibility of their compromise. I wanted to emerge from my time with them still not able to cast a conclusive judgment on them and i did end up at that place there is no character the book who i would say is all the way good or all the way bad. There are some who i am more sympathetic to the humanitarian and aid worker, doctor lisa, someone my heart goes out to i never met her, she died tragically in a plane crash in 2016 before i begin the active reporting for this book. Like i said ernst is someone who he is a big boy. He knows what he is doing, maybe he knows better and so i dont feel that same protectiveness about him and he can answer for whatever people want to hold him to account for whether its the crucified boy story or the fake news about 17 that was on channel one. From that hes may be engaged in the compromise and also an experienced player who knows what he is doing. There is a wide range of my own attitude, my own attitude to the characters but i never could say, this person is in the good category, this person is in the back row to gori. Anyone interesting left on the cutting room floor that you want to tell us about . Not really. At least thank god i had the wherewithal or efficiency to draw people early. I didnt like it months into reporting with someone only to realize they werent the right one. The priest character took a while to come together. There were some false starts there but that as you know theres no wasted reporting even though i spent time with other priests who did make it into the book because i was so ignorant of that world in particular it was a great education in what the Russian Orthodox scene is like and how priests think about the patriarch and what life is like as a priest. A lot of education on that subject. So, there were some priests who did not make it into the book but im sure their experiences and stories they shared did somehow reflect my ability to be ofoto near raider of that. And last question before we go to the audience, you and your book you and your book very and presciently and appropriately on younger people. The other group that we fetishize the people around the world. The grownups create the problems but the High Schoolers from parkland, florida are going to is solve the growing trend gun issue. In College Students and rush to get rid of putin forests. What was your take away . What would you tell americans . Our great hope for the democratic russia where they just like their parents . I dont know with young people and trying to figure out the exact question little bit of both there definitely is something going on that is different with this generation than their parents. That seems very clear to me from spending time with them and that has to do with reasons of objective history and experience for so many people, everyone improves generation was the decline of the soviet union actually think the period before the collapse was dominated by this widely double that was the lingo of soviet society by the end that really produced or generation of two of sinex. Im not sure russia has been able to overcome that in the years since. They now top power, they will soon not tomorrow be replaced eventually by people whose formative experiences just came after. There is no great magic or alchemy involved. Its just the fact that this generation was not steeped in that time. They were steeped in those experiences and emerged with less cynicism and more trust. I see the way young people engage and have higher bonds between individuals. Not even necessarily activism i wouldnt say, just the way they seem to trust one another to do the right thing ultimately. I dont necessarily think their parents see the world that way. I dont think the parents navigate their lives presuming that this person will probably do me right in the end. I think as you know from the experience and if you agree, a lot of russians who are say 50 plus, 60 plus would navigate the world with the opposite expectation. In aggregate i think that changes the society if you have 100 Million People thinking that way. Soon you wont. Soon you will have people who were steeped in a different culture. The question is, how strong will the inertia of the system be . Eventually the young people with their ambitions, with their aims for their life, their dreams will want to realize those dreams and. And compromise on those dreams is to make and if the architecture hasnt changed so much it will require compromises that look like that of a parents. And how will they emerge . Will they agreed to the same compromises their parents did and will they be changed by those compromises . Will they emerge at the end of it resembling their parents more than they do now . I dont know. Thats where my quads i answer comes in. We have to run the game to see its outcome. We are going to go to audience questions. That there is a mic right there. Im going to be a tough moderator because josh is so interesting we want to hear more from him. Please say your name, make your questions short and please make it a question not a statement, if you dont i will cut you off. My name is david. This is a question about something you may have left on the cutting room floor. He wrote about him and 2013, very frustrated entrepreneur who was impressed by his competitors who use the system against him. Whatever happened to him . Why didnt you read about him . A real blast from the blast. Thank you for mentioning that stories. I kept up with him for a little bit and he became an entrepreneur rights activist. He was helping other entrepreneurs who are in similar situations who faced police or criminal repressions launched other by officials or their competitors in cahoots with the officials as was in his case. Like i said, kept in touch for a little bit. He was given advice and counsel to other entrepreneurs and i have no real good answer as to why i didnt include them other than the book is already hundred 80 pages long. At a certain. In connecticut everybody in. I take your. And i always thought he was a great character and certainly the act of running a business in russia requires no small amount of compromise, no matter how clean you want to be or really are still its inescapable when attacks are veterinary police ever show up. I do read about data bits in the formative character in crimea. Part of it is about the annexation of the part of it is about running post annexation in crimea. Anybody else . My name is rick davidson. What i wanted to ask you was, how was everything you read about these people making compromises in their lives, how did it affect the dealings of russia with the outside world . Or, is it to completely different . Not necessarily. Like russia, domestic politics and foreign politics are really overlapped or one grows out of the other and it is certainly affected by another. In cases like ernst as russia adopted this much more aggressive stance especially in relation to the westin america most of all in 2014 ernst is the head of channel one, was absolutely swept up in that. In fact, change the hotel nerve his channel and completely change the nature of the compromise required of him. I talked about it a minute ago. Someone like doctor lisa binkley, her death on board a Russia Military aircraft flying from sochi to syria was directly linked both to her cooperation with the states and her willingness to participate in state led humanitarian missions and also with the russian intervention in syria. She was on a mission that was meant to be a kind of good pr mission led by the Russian Defense ministry to travel to syria and deliver medicines to hospitals and that sort of thing. But her death was a direct outcome of russian Foreign Policy you could say to a certain sense. Can even in the case of perm 36, the Museum Dedicated to political repressions in the gullah, he was subject to what you could call a hostile takeover from the state. In 2015 it was founded in the 90s by some local diy historians and eventually taken out from under them ten years later or more by the state trade at a time, at the peak of the anti western, anti you crane hysteria, when among other sins they have committed it was too soft on ukrainian nationalist prisoners who were held at the museum or at held at the prison in the postwar years. Can in the new era, when anything linked to ukrainian nationalism was equated with fascism and that was used as an explanation as to why russia had to intervene in the in down boss or at least stand up for the citizens of dumb baths and was embroiled in this whole conflict, it was to prevent the return of this ugly ukrainian fascism. The museum could not have these exhibits that spoke too kindly of the historical figures. Even in places where you would not expect that russias relations and attitudes with the outside world absolutely affected the compromises required of my characters. Soon a carolyn, thank you so much. My question is, if we can expect that that putin may read this book, what is the motivation for someone like ernst to be like fully open with you, knowing that putin might read this book . And, do you think there is any underlying with how open he was or what he said . Is there anything that your experience with that, that big brother kind of watching you and watching these people and sharing of stories does that change the narrative . I cant really ever know or fully penetrate why somebody chose to speak with me and be open with me and that does affect of course what they are telomere how they are process what theyre why. Its ultimately unknown to a final degree. And someone like ernst, i think that he really felt a need or at least a sense of relief in having this earnest, curious, fundamentally sympathetic american journalist sits and listen to him and taken seriously, take his career seriously, and give him that credibility as an odd tour. May be an odd tour who collaborated with the state that we all in america are going to say is evil and putin is horrible, fine, i dont think theres any illusion about that. But i will grant him the status of this cultural and artistic talents and visionary may be even. The fact that i would see him in that light and through giving voice to his compromises also allow him to come off as more is just propagandists without any brains. I think that was important to him come important to his selfimage and there is something satisfying and having that read back to him by an american journalist. I think that is true for his particular case but Something Like that was going on for a lot of characters. They wanted to be taken seriously and understood the human rights worker in chechnya who effectively change sides i guess you could say and became a kind of courts of human rights activists for regime. I think that was motivated by similar dynamic. A lot of her old colleagues in the Human Rights Community had turned her bikes on her and really criticized her for that move, understandably as she was left without a lot of former colleagues and friends and i was there willing to listen to her story and hear her out and take her seriously and i think a lot of the characters found something appealing and that. Cannot just piggyback piggyback really quickly on that question . Did you find people . It was interesting that people who spoke to were quite aware what they were doing but they were also as we know people in the system who had a certain. Drink the koolaid a little too much and stop being aware of the fact that they may compromises. They have really come to believe that thinking of a fellow media figure, did you notice any of that where you just saw the person like they crossed a certain line and then the line disappeared so far beyond the rear view mirror that they just lost all of that perspective . Some people who are not characters in the book who i did not choose for that reason because that slightly less interesting or not the type of compromise i wanted to pursue, but of course they come in a supporting characters and there is another Russian Television personality, dimitri who in the 90s was a real liberal who loved to western journalistic standards and is now the most egregious and Disgusting Television host on russian state media. Is like russian hannity. Yes, but even more possible clownish and foul. And, i think he is exactly that kind of person. He is so inhabited, in his new role that i dont think he reflects back on his old one and has any real capacity or interest in understanding how he got from. A to. B let alone baring his soul in some way to a journalist who wants him to explain that journey. But even with someone like ernst, there were moments where we were talking past each other absolutely. One of them was about image 17 in the shootdown of the Malaysian Airlines in 2014. There has been a lot of investigation, independent once by the dutch government or a Commission Led by the dutch that proved conclusively it was shot down by a russianmade antiaircraft system that was provided covertly to russian backed separatist and Eastern Ukraine at the time. And, channel one has put forward all sorts of absurd and contradictory theories about what actually happened with mh 17. None of them that they would shut down by a Russian Missile the ukrainians were trying to shootdown prudence president ial plane. All type of theories that dont even match up with one another. The. Is just to produce a lot of noise i make people not believe in any one thing or another. But when ernst and i were talking about mh 17 it was clear we were not actually talking about an objective, factual universe. In the book i read about it felt like were having conversation about aesthetics or religion. We were to Intelligent Minds almost taken pleasure from this the type of sparring match talking about big ideas or our favorite films, or whatever rather than an actual objective historical fact. One specific thing did happen to mh 17 and all other things did not happen. 300 lives or last. It was hard to have that conversation with him. In moments like that i did feel like okay, whatever, however we can have these shared cultural references and have shared cultural taste, there is something that keeps us from having a true common conversation. Fascinating. Thanks very much. Your comments about russian youth is really what spawned this question, its going to be or have something along the lines of Exchange Programs and who learns more and what happens in exchange between American Youth and russian. I want to change the question to another hypothetical. What would happen hypothetically if you could put together a bunch of russian journalists with a bunch of american journalists in some place that was some bug so they could spend a week in total secrecy and so forth . That happens all the time in moscow impacts. In rooms that are bugs. I dont know, but that his daily business in moscow. One of my closest friends are russian journalists mimic so who come so we changed . Who comes away change more from the experience . Im not sure. Id be curious to see what julia says that. I certainly emerged with a respect for the work that russian journalists to the that actually our attitude toward russian journalism as this profession under siege which it is, but it can veer toward a kind of patronizing affect by not actually giving credit to the real work that is being done every day. At there are journalists being attacked in journalists being murdered. But there are more journalists doing brave and incredible, impactful work and by painting all of russian journalists with the broad breasts and pity these poor people who were dodging bullets from the kremlin come i dont want to deny that but it denies the work that is being done. So, the other thing i would add to what josh said is that we tend to come a lot of journalists to go there thinking that these guys are remedial journalists who lived under an authoritarian regime and to not know how to report or to generally someone impacts a lot of these guys put on a master class every single day and you think, how are they able to get this through that scoop in the analysis they provide can be super rigorous. I also think that americans overly us and by asking us arent you scared to go to russia . Arent you afraid that you will be killed or beaten up . The fact is, we are quite privileged by being may be less untouchable under trump but quite untouchable as american citizens in it is our russian friends and colleagues who are under a daily threat not just a being beaten up and killed, but more likely to be just driven out of the profession by the economics of it which is far less sexy which we dont really care about here while we hear about this or that independent journal or news website getting shut down because advertisers are being pressured not to advertise and therefore people cannot be paid and people have families and mortgages et cetera that we dont really give those people martyrs status the way we do to the ones were killed. So, thats a terrible notes and on. You want to say one more thing so we can end on a happier note . No, only to echo the fact that i certainly learned a lot in this book and it really could not have happened without the work of russian journalists who are very generous and pointing the way to sources and ideas. I would be happy to end on a note to them, thanks to them and you should all read it to the extent you can. [applause] thank you. Josh will stick around and. Theres two copies on the checkout desk up front, josh will be here signing books. Please sign aligned to the rights and help the staff by folding up the chairs. Thank you again. Tonight on the communicators come on American Economic liberties project founder, sarah miller on Big Tech Companies as monopolies and the impact on corporate concentration. Now there is essentially a couple of strategies if youre a tech started out but. Are you going to sell to facebook or google . And what that is done, it worked the ability of innovators in Silicon Valley to actually innovate according to market needs and according to ideas. Instead everybodys guessing, how can i develop something that facebook will buyer that google will buy . And that is not necessarily really how we want an economy or an Innovation Sector to function. Watch the communicators tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspan2. You are watching a special edition a book tv, now airing during the week while members of congress are in their districts due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight, biographies. First, Robert Wilson editor of the american scholar. He recounts the life of 19th century showman pt barnum, the cofounder of the Barnum Bailey circus. Then the early 20th century Rose Pastor Stokes was a Founding Member of americans Communists Party and married to new york millionaire, james graham. And later, the discoveries of women geniuses today and throughout history. Into a book tv and over the weekend on cspan2. Cspan has roundtheclock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic and it is all available on demand as cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch white house briefings, updates from governors and state officials, track the spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps, watch ondemand any time unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus