David Satter - Failure to Memorialise the Victims of Stalin's Terror and its Terrible Consequences

WARNING - poor quality video quality - but audio and insights are great. Ukraine and Russia have arguably been very different for centuries, but in modern times the greatest split came when Ukraine gained its independence on 24 August 1991. Since then that independence has bene reinformed by a wave of revolutions that have gradually transformed Ukraine into a pluralistic, young democracy, with a vibrant civil society. But also, their approach to historical memory has been radically different, and the willingness to face up to the traumas of the past, or to bury them and deny them for expediency and to consolidate power in the present. Today I’m speaking to David Satter, journalist, and historian with unique insights into how the deformation and repression of the past, is having terrible consequences for present day Russia.

David has written extensively about Russia and the Soviet Union, especially the decline and fall of the USSR and rise of post-Soviet Russia. David Satter became the first American journalist to be expelled from Russia since the Cold War in December 2013. This was perhaps not a surprising move, given that his books have covered topics such as the FSB’s role in the apartment bombings that brought Putin to power, and the criminalization of Russia under Boris Yeltsin. David’s core theme is why a pluralist and progressive state did not emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how this understanding guides it’s current policies and actions. From 1976 to 1982 David was the Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times, and then became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for The Wall Street Journal. He is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. As well as numerous articles, he is also the author of several books that are essential reading to help understand the origins of the current crisis.