Eric and Eliot host Sergey Radchenko, the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies based in Bologna, Italy. They discuss Sergey’s personal story of growing up in Sakhalin in the Soviet Union, living in China, becoming an historian and gaining access to documentary sources in both countries that were heretofore unavailable and which shed new light on the history of the Cold War. The discussion covers ideology vs. realpolitik in explaining Soviet foreign policy, the USSR as both a status quo and revolutionary power, the contingency of historical events, the psychology of Russian and Chinese leaders, the Sino-Soviet rivalry and competition for leadership of the communist world, who was responsible for the outbreak of the Cold War, and how Russia’s search for legitimacy, equality with the US and greatness, deeply rooted in Russian imperial and Soviet history has re-emerged in new forms under Vladimir Putin.

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.