William Tyler
Stalin, Cold War, and Gerontocracy
Summary
A resonant and fascinating exploration of the course of Russian governance post-WW II from and Stalin through the Cold War to Gorbachev and his reforms.
William Tyler
William Tyler has spent his entire professional life in adult education, beginning at Kingsgate College in 1969. He has lectured widely for many public bodies, including the University of Cambridge and the WEA, in addition to speaking to many clubs and societies. In 2009, William was awarded the MBE for services to adult education, and he has previously been a scholar in residence at the London Jewish Cultural Centre.
Well, I suppose Putin might say that they tried a capitalist economy under Yeltsin, and it led to even more corruption. Well, it wasn’t a capitalist economy like Americas or Britain. Well, we’d have to have sessions, and I’m not the person to lead it, you’d have to have a session with economists about whether it could work or not.
Well, he said bluntly that he would give the devil a choice, would give the devil the benefit of the doubt if he could. And he was referring to Stalin as the devil, but he was a devil that we needed because of the worse devil of Hitler. Of course, Churchill had no time for Stalin. I don’t know, we don’t really know quite what was wrong with Stalin.
Because he was Ukraine, because he was a Ukrainian and he wanted to give them something. “I know from the people of a community with which my synagogue was saying that they were delighted to become Russian again,” yes, because it had always been Russian and because most of it was taken during the reign of Catherine II. And it was decidedly Russian and it was only given to Ukraine, as I say, because Khrushchev was Ukrainian and it was his sort of gift to the Fatherland. So it makes this Ukraine, this Russian-Ukrainian war is simply not good versus evil. It’s a very much more complex story in there.