 We're back for live. We're here on history is here to help on a given Thursday. We're going to talk about Eastern Europe post 1945 and see how it is here to help. Okay and my co-host and contributor Peter Hoffenberg and our guest today Carl Ackerman. Carl is history and social studies professor at Punahou for the past 209 years. Welcome to the show Carl. I think it's 2009 years actually. Oh got it. The students would differ I think. We have to find students. In the place to see them Carl. Well Peter why don't you why don't you give a more sensible introduction. Not sensible but pleasurable to welcome back and talk about the scope of our show today. Right I hope some of our viewers recognize that handsome face. Last time we asked him to talk about his award-winning quail program. Today we're bringing him back with a different Yamaha and that's as a PhD in Russian history from a relatively small and significant university in Northern California called University of California Berkeley. So Stanford Pants can do what they want with that. He studied with a very prominent scholar. So Jay and I have asked Carl back not as a teacher really so much even though he has a fine expertise in that but really as a scholar and to ask about something that we only really get little vapors here and there about what the heck is going on in what we used to call Europe east of the Elbe or eastern or central Europe and in particular I'd like to ask Carl questions. Dr. Ackerman really instates questions about Russia. The emphasis will be on post 1945 but I think we can find a lot of continuities and a lot of ideas since the end of the second world war. So let me turn it back to Jay who always has the excellent questions and Carl get ready to grab your Oxford University Press book and have it handy. I have a completely unfair question for you but you know unfair questions have a place on our think tech talk shows. So here 1945 the end of World War II east in Europe which was a real mess at that time. I mean having come out of the war was all you know a train wreck. So from that point on forward till now what are the salient events from which and trends from which we can learn to appreciate it today? You know Jay I would start with 1945 and say you know what people should do is they should look and find in central Europe the Elbe River because that's where the Russians and the Americans etc and the Allies met one another. So if you go to the east of the Elbe for the period between 1945 and 1989 you're going to have Soviet dominance which means you know Marxist-Slaninist format with the exception a bit of Yugoslavia and with exceptions of Switzerland you're going to have essentially you know Eastern European countries that's from Poland and Hungary, Bulgaria etc dominated by the former Soviet Union and Marxist-Slaninist framework. Because you asked for a couple salient points of course the key date then is 1989 when the Berlin Wall falls or the collapse of the Soviet Union in August 14th 1991 where I happened to be at the very time with about 20 students so I got I got a first-hand look at that and the cause of the decline. Did they get special credit for that course? Thanks Carl. Yeah Marxist thanks a lot. I happened to be that small I happened to be in that small university that Peter said shortly thereafter and when I was interviewed by a news channel I don't know how they got my number but they did they what I but they said was that kids got you know one of the best history lessons and of course they were all scared out of their minds as I was because there were tanks always around us and I see this CIA provided you with $25,000. Maybe thank you Carl. We landed in Moscow in August 1991 from Sochi and of course there had been you know classical music on the on the film my kids were all spread out and differed they were high school kids all in different homes and in Sochi and it would gather together we were supposed to leave and go and of course they let us go and my friend from the Soviet part of our tour you know said Carl Leopoldovitch my patron nickname small problem a coup d'etat and I said well thanks Sergei the name was Sergei. That's a Russian tradition a coup d'etat yeah you can just some people say we have them here in the US too but that's not part of the show and Jay just to just to complete the complete the the the salient points I would say from 1991 to the current day you know you still have those you know in many Eastern European countries you don't have the traditions of democracy nor do you have the traditions of you know the Protestant Reformation or the but do you have either the Catholic Church or the Russian Orthodox Church but you have different developments in Eastern Europe much like you have in Western Europe today with the battle the sway between authoritarianism and and also democratic democratic traditions and I'm going to stop there. I am reminded of Ann Applebaum's article in The Atlantic about a year ago where she spoke about what motivated people to hang on to those authoritarian traditions for all those years in Eastern Europe. She had several you know different things that made them hang on but the one that sticks in my head was fear. Eastern Europe was a study in fear for those days wasn't? I would say you know that you know you have to remember that you know you do have some Eastern European countries you know that are that had experiments with democracy but for the country that controlled them after 1945 and that is you know the former Soviet Union that the former Soviet Union only had a brief experiment with democracy you know with the Duma and the Fall of the Tsar and of course the Duma came about 1905 and only lasted till 1917 and you know unfortunately you had a bunch of you know very great experiments and you know and you know once Russia had pulled out of the war briefly you had a lot of liberal ideas and but they didn't last very long and so you had this tradition of totalitarianism and it spread of course with the with the Soviet with Soviet troops you know in Eastern Europe and of course I always point out that you know we always focus on you know D-Day but you know it was really the Soviets that you know did the did the great harm to the to the German armies you know in Stalingrad and then retreating back not that the not that Joseph Stalin was any good because you know he would force people into battle by shooting them if they retreated so very effective though yeah if you want a way to war that's an effective way to do it what a way to go so um you know what what I get out of all of this is that is that we can learn well we should be able to learn something from the evolution of authoritarian government through this USSR or otherwise at the end of the war till more recently where it hasn't been so authoritarian because right now we have arguably the return of authoritarianism in various countries in Europe but we also have you know glimmers of the democratic governments in Europe so the question is how did they get away from authoritarianism how did they you know move to evolve to a more democratic style and what can we learn from that well you know I think just like any society you know one of the countries that I think would be the most interesting to look at is Poland because you know Poland began with its own solidarity movement and that the whole that the the Marxist-Sonanist totalitarian regime doesn't you don't have to be I mean you could possibly be a Marxist and also be a Democrat too small b but with it with the current with the situation in in Poland you know you had the catholic church being strong in people's lives you know even under the totalitarian rule so people had you know an incentive to buck the system all the way along and the the other part of this is that you know what's interesting and what most commentaries of news commentaries don't comment on is that there's a huge number of Eastern European countries that are members of NATO and a huge number of Eastern European countries that are part of the general European community and so it's very difficult to join both organizations and remain you know too conservative because you have the Western democracies of England and France and of course the key democracy and of course when you talk about Eastern Europe you know of course East Germany was absorbed by Western Germany and they're all part of the general German state and ironically at the time I was kind of against the uniting both Germany so I wanted to make them into two separate countries because I was so afraid of what happened in the middle of the 20th century but when they reunited and that was wrong when they reunited they produced you know a very democratic very democratic tendencies even though there's you know right wing elements France right wing elements in England which are Western European countries but you know the fact that you have someone like Angela Merkel emerging from East Germany and becoming chancellor and perhaps the most progressive and most democratic of all European leaders is a real sign of what happened in Eastern Europe who were craving this you know democratic front so I think it's you know a multifaceted thing and even the Ukraine you know the European Union has this kind of like emerging European your European countries and even Ukraine you know once they get a leader that can divorce themselves from completely divorce themselves from any kind of Russian hegemony wants to join the European Union so there we go and if you look a map of the European Union and you look at a map of NATO that's all over Eastern Europe so that's a good sign yeah I want to cover some other countries and you can tell me these countries should no longer be on the map or you can tell me they're doing well okay we talked already about Poland we talked about Ukraine Belarus we've seen that in the newspaper what about Belarus where do they stand on the the barometer of democracy Belarus is not very democratic and they are uniting with you know the greater Russian sovereignty and you know I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort of you know extended union there I mean not that Vladimir Putin doesn't control a lot of things there anyway but I would be you know Belarus is one of those countries if you look at the map is not aligned with NATO and not aligned with the European Union what about Romania Romania is I mean I think Romania is both you know I mean I'm not I can't be positive about this but what for what I remember Romania is both a part of the European Union and NATO I'm pretty sure about the European Union I think it's part of NATO also and so you know almost every European country except there are some countries in the former Yugoslavia that I think are not part of NATO and are not part of the European Union but most countries including Bulgaria Romania Poland of course the Czech Republic of the Czech Republic of course was it was a great example of democracy being run by a certain hovel you know who had been writing democratic treatises you know as part of the his anti-Soviet period and of course a playwright to boot so you know I've got to love to the Czech Republic because you know you had a former leader you know who was not only a Democrat but also you know playwright. When you think about a lot of these countries have made or people from these countries have made significant contributions to western society western culture, western art, western science. The next one on my list is what is it oh Hungary. Now Hungary is an interesting part because I believe Hungary is both part of the European Union and NATO but it has a strong man now as its leader and interestingly enough if I'm not wrong about this and I don't want to Peter you can correct me but I believe he is the example that Tucker Carlson has gone. He is. Tucker Carlson went last month and had a week of shows focused on the American relationship with an individual that America should be promoting and I'm more than happy to discuss that at that length. That's absolutely right that Tucker Carlson took. Let me finish my my list. Okay then you mentioned the Czech Republic. I saw a Slovakia on on the map. Slovakia still exists I guess. What is it like there? By the way it sounds like that if a country is in the EU it is by definition at least somewhat democratic. Is that is that correct? Is that one of the standards for admission to the EU? I'll let Peter. Yeah I know I think we want to have a slightly complementary and connected relationship with Carl's superb political and institutional analysis. We got to remind ourselves and this can answer your question Jay that economic relations are crucial and the EU invites people saves them like Greece very often based upon economic trade capital investment etc. So you could be authoritarian and be a very good economic market and you could be in the EU. The difficulty is the flip side. You could be a democracy like Greece and have a horrible economy and still be in the EU. So the answer is that democracy is not the litmus test. What it is is again compliment to Carl's important political discussion is from a democracy and here's where Marxist Democrats come in to remind ourselves it's not just the institutions it's the nature of society. You can have democratic institutions or seemingly democratic institutions but a non-democratic society and that's really what we're talking about in almost all these places. They are all driven by ethnic nationalism, ethnic dominance, ethnic dominance which means anti-semitism which means hatred of non-western migrants and whereas that gets a lot of press when it happens in France it happens on a regular basis in these countries in Eastern Europe. So the response to Carl's important comments would be all right Jay, yeah they might have institutions they may be voting they may be parties but who gets to vote? What influence does a minority party have? What is their attitude to foreigners? And in that regard most of these countries score well below what you'd want your movie to score on rotten tomatoes well below and Hungary is a prime example of that. It has institutions but it is highly ethnocentric. I would even go and say it's highly racist. It's not a democratic society. So that's the question. On the question of rotten tomatoes my wife and I saw a movie last night which was the first time we ever saw a movie like this which was Bulgarian okay a Bulgarian movie because one of the reasons we like Netflix so much is it has this enormous diversity of movies and enormous diversity of languages well of course there were English subtitles we could understand it and it was it was about a the misuse of an intelligence apparatus by some fellow who ran it okay and that showed you there was a kind of governmental corruption in Bulgaria I'm proud of it. The other thing it showed you was that there was a certain value on human life in the in the takeaway from this movie and there were moral values in play which I thought was interesting. So it was like a western movie I think it was built for a western audience the production values were good the economics undoubtedly were good they got it on Netflix. The bottom line is that Bulgaria has entered the the economic world by making a movie like this and and it has catered to western values in making a movie like this. Absolutely and when you look at the and when you see a movie like that you want to try to stimulate the whole time and you want to see at the end whether or not the European film community has also invested in it. So when you see a European movie these days there's often British and French money which answers in part your your question about you know maybe it's a wider audience. I think we also have to be very careful and if our listeners you don't want to use films let's take a look at what was censored. All these countries have either self-imposed censorship or governmental censorship right that's why we have the standards in the United States because the creator of the standards did not want the government to do what he thought the government would do but in most countries the government does that so when I see a Bulgarian movie you know I agree with you entirely it's a work of art it appeals to probably a non-Bulgarian audience but I am really interested in what's on the cutting room floor and please remember when we talk about these societies and your your listeners our listeners are probably mostly in Hawaii which is a relatively liberal society. Please remember that most these governments do not support gay lesbian and trans rights that ends up on the cutting room floor most of them are not multi-racial that ends up on the cutting room floor and like Russia's Putin they tend to be very puritanical about sex that ends up on the so I think like if I were to teach this I mean I would ask the students to think about what did get screams and ask that question as well. Oh I'm sure in this case there was a question of the the actions of an intelligence agency a government intelligence agency and you knew the Bulgarian government had something to say about how that issue was handled in the movie you know that. Right so it would be interesting to see you know what was okay and what was not okay for the government censor just like the government needs today but we have a private company that does not not the government. Well Carl let me let me turn to you and ask you you know you mentioned or was it Peter one of you mentioned you want to say that that you know the migrants have had a big play in each as they have in Western Europe certainly. Sure and you know that sort of turns things to to the right it makes people you know become what's the word nationalistic and it maybe takes them back a step or two rather than forward and you know even Angela Merkel is leaving office like yesterday she's stepped down so you know we're going to have a different tone in Germany I think but in Eastern Europe we're moving already to a different tone and it will become I'm suggesting this possibility more authoritarian and it may not be a direct result of the migrant you know phenomenon but maybe an indirect of the migrant result of the migrant of the migrant phenomenon what do you think about that Carl are we moving to the right and what effect has the migrant phenomenon on hand on all that? Well you know as Peter noted you know the migrant phenomenon as you know to Jay just now as produced you know sort of the same sort of reactionary feelings that you know we we're getting in the United States about what's going on you know south of the border in Texas right now at this very moment it doesn't have to be just Latinos it can be Haitians etc etc but I want to go back to answer your question to what Peter said about ethnic divisions you know it's you know in the United States people are rightly concerned about racial divisions but when you see another Caucasian person not always unless you're far right if someone is Jewish or someone's Italian or someone is Irish people don't readily recognize the differences um if you are Caucasian most of the time that's what I would say it's just you go into the kitchen you gotta go into the kitchen then you're happy but yeah it's true um but if it but in Eastern Europe they're very aware of this I want to tell you both a story from my teaching experience in special school 238 in at that time Leningrad and I was asking the kids I always found you know the the real litmus test for me about children who were high school ages to ask them who they would marry you know would they marry anyone of any ethnic background and the Russian women and men because it was mostly Russians in this class of great Russian nationality or Ukrainian nationality and they all said they would prefer to marry another Russian or Ukrainian person some of the women interestingly enough said uh we would like to marry a Jewish person because Jewish men don't beat their wives which I thought was a very interesting talk about it yeah yeah very very interesting to be the stereotype because you know and it has to do a lot with the alcoholism in all of Eastern Europe specifically right but when I asked them about whether they would marry and I wasn't talking about you know migrants coming from northern Africa or migrants coming from anywhere else who had a different color but but even you know people from you know who might be what we consider Hapa or Asian they said oh no we'd never marry them you know if they came they were Korean and they came from Kazakhstan because uh we they're so different they're cultural you know they're so so different culturally and these kids you know I mean they're they're not saying it with the recognition that that might imply some sort of you know ethnic discrimination or racial discrimination they're they're being honest and and and forthright and I was their teacher so it was interesting and if you compare that to you know classes that I had at Ilani and Punahau the students will generally respond that they'll marry anyone of of any nationality and interestingly enough in terms of the gender issue which was also very different in Eastern Europe they're much more traditional in most countries as as as Peter said I remember there were yeah there have been various friends of mine that have emigrated here and they still retain those sort of traditional values of women and men you know they will they will they they continue in those sort of from relationships but if you were to ask again someone from a kid from McKinley high school or from Punahau or from Ilani they'll say you know we'll do equal share of the work and things like that interestingly enough and I hope this doesn't fit in too badly for one of the private schools that I've taught in my life when I asked in the class about who would do the uh who would do the you know dishes and who would do the the kind of work that you know Peter and I grew up with um and ij i'm sure you did too you know doing chores and doing dishes and doing things around the house um they said to me which had me laughing they said uh dr accurate you know we're going to make so much money that um it will have we'll have hired help I thought you know neither of us will do this and I thought that would be nice okay that would be nice I want to be one of the ones that I got the answer you know I just I I I keep holding on to like Carl touches on a very important point in two ways for us in our audience one is that this right now is the state with the large the highest percentage of intermarriage across the country the highest percentage which is I think a very positive step okay so that's to echo even in the public schools we quite often have with Carl said and secondly it's a reminder that um while we could well we're very concerned about white supremacy quote unquote we're very concerned about the french republics problems uh ethnic nationalism it's just baked into eastern europe and it's actually baked into most of the world uh if you look at what's going on in india in turkey in places like brazil we one way to see that even in china right where the han ethnic group is the dominant ethnic group right we we in america and I think that people's old as us can recall that there were new york firms which should not hire a catholic new york firms which should not hire a protestant but uh because of our focus as Carl says on race we tend to too easily map race onto other societies where ethnicity is really the distinction now the difficulty as as Carl implies is that he's another society's ethnicity does what racism does here in other words the implication is you're born that way everything that you have everybody in your group shares and as Carl suggests if one were to marry right there would be a dilution of the ethnicity so in many ways that that can back and that worries me a lot to answer your macro question okay is particularly the migrant issue which is the challenge for all societies right are you going to be an open inclusive egalitarian multicultural society however you define culture uh the verdict so far in eastern europe is no but is it moving i would also let me just have one let me just have one sentence that it's a mistake for us to say that the migrant issue has created a new problem because the migrant issue is is just the contemporary reflection on a long history of ethnic nationalism in which the migrants could easily replace the 19th century by the romai by the jews by others who lived they weren't necessarily migrants right they've been jews and boland uh since well at least before last week so i'm i want people to understand and think about these are not necessarily new problems when hungarians attack migrants and jews they're tapping into hungarian political culture for centuries and centuries let's be honest in the us right this is not racist was not new the reflection might be new but it's tapping into something so i i think in order to say you know how can these countries become democratic they have to do what we have to do which is come to terms with their past as well in eastern in eastern europe curl right would you say that this uh baked in condition in these countries has slowed down their progress i mean people generally think of eastern europe is behind the game uh is this one of the reasons or is it one of the um you know effects uh and is it going to continue to do that is it going to continue to make them vulnerable to dictatorships i think the answer to your last question is a definite yes um but i i also think that there are mitigating factors because if you you know if you i think um you know i just saw a pew poll in the last couple weeks about um not only eastern europe but you know russia also i mean all russia um about how people are adapting to the new um you know semi democratic uh capitalist framework and um most people approve you know and you have to remember that since 1991 you know we have more than 30 years of or at least 30 years of um of uh history so that you know people are adapting to these new structures so i think uh because of the again the economic connection etc that there there's there's definitely hope um but these these traditions run strong and um you know you know um you know as as peter alluded to even in the united states that you know is only a generation ago and probably with our parents all our collective parents that people were very conscious of ethnic divisions too and whether they would marry of a person of a certain religion much less someone of a of a different race but i want to also um just mention something about hawaii you know when i was my oldest daughter who's now a professor at arizona state in organic chemistry um when she was in at claremont mckenna her undergraduate institution um she had an interesting um definition of diversity she was going out with a bunch of kids who were part of this group called the posse which in the posse is a group of kids that have gotten into college that were given who were of some sort of you know either you know hispanic african-american asian etc and were admitted to colleges and they but they represented a unrepresented group and uh she said dad you know it's a very diverse group you know some of the students came from ucla some came from claremont mckenna some are um from occidental so she used that word diverse in terms of the colleges that people came from so you know she had no clue it's a hapahali kid from hawaii you know what the what the overall uh divisions right i think would kids stay in the mainland for a long stay in that continent for a long time they eventually um uh discover this and i have to add what from what peter said about you know ethic divisions in um even in a place like china um our youngest daughter is adopted and when we were about to adopt her and actually you were you know she were about to get get her the people from the orphanage kept saying to us you know she's great haunt she's great haunt and so you know from american you know getting a you know a baby from china who's healthy but who cares you know so but it made me it made you know both my wife and i just hysterically uh allowed because you know what is this great haunt business you know i mean but of course it has it resonates in china for obvious reasons like very much and as you said uh about the russians there was a poll taken 20 years ago that russians disproportionately were nostalgic about the soviet union and russians were disproportionately nostalgic about starlin i don't think that'll be the same in cheshina right so i think we have to run yourselves especially carlin i taught teach world history and i know that a lot of your audience is interested in more than what happens in the nine six eight two two area code and most of these states and most of these empires have been driven and remain dominated by an ethnic group and that's one way to write history to answer your question though j i'm going to be telling you that which i know you appreciate what do you mean by progress because in order to answer the question about how migrants would well i'll tell you my next question and that'll help you previous okay all right my next question is what you know from the four corners of this conversation i don't i don't think we can learn too much from these countries from east in europe in the period between 1945 and now i don't think the united states can learn very much from them because they they really although they've had some you know some success in some ways it's been tangential it's been follower success not leadership not leadership success and you know the answer to the title question here is no nothing sorry not a thing okay i'm i'm going to be rabbinical um i think we can learn a lot and most of it is what not to do all right right but that's an important lesson i mean yes rather than looking at americans it's being exceptional just because they're they are americans exception exceptionalism is often not doing what somebody else did by mistake and i think there's some pretty valuable lessons some of them are existential some are not and and i want carl to poke holes in ones that he feels are irrelevant uh one is to remember that Stalinism or the soviet union while influential was a short blip in the history of this region uh what conditioned Stalinism and the soviet regime was not just what Stalin and the russians did but what were pre-existent so i think really to have this discussion we got to put Stalin and put the ussr out of the discussion and talk about really some of the longer term um communists in eastern europe cannot it can be for example compared to apartheid apartheid only existed as a legal institution in fact as long as the soviet union and the warsaw pact existed in europe but nobody says that apartheid can only be understood by what happened in 1947 and 49 it has to be understood by long-term racism and i think it's important for us as americans to not focus so much on what the soviets did but what the soviets could do what was the fertile ground all right that's one thing secondly i think we can learn if we have not learned already that uh the road of ethnic nationalism is not only littered with burned cars and dead bodies it'll lead you right over a cliff that's a valuable very valuable lesson from this this region that ethnic nationalism is a knowing situation and thirdly as i said to start because i know we have to go and i and again carls institutional and political questions were vital and his analysis was vital but democracy is not just an institutional question as i said at the start it's a social question it says carls said who are you married uh who are you who are you bowl with as we talked about with our israeli guest who are your kids going to go to school with and when when 21st century hungry as a publicly funded elementary school with romai somalian jewish eastern christian uh moggyard children all being taught in the same classroom with the same educational tools then come back and talk then we can talk about democracy yeah carl what would you add to that you know i would i would think i think what peter said is a droid um i i do think that the one of the things that um that the soviet union and the reason that i'm not necessarily stolen but the whole system um has um a fairly firm legacy and the reason the poll that you that was taken uh 20 years ago that peter alluded to um which was um very revealing is that you know what the what the what the mark the sun in this regimes did is it provided it's sort of a social welfare um for people you know because you know in my trips to the soviet union and eastern europe i mean there was there was people were living almost all people at sort of a lower middle class level if you couldn't use that term um you know comparing it to the united states that there's all sorts of problems with that but still that's the way i'll do it um so that you have this and i think what we what we learn is that you know if you know you and i relate it back to the united states if you fulfill people's economic needs which joe biden is trying to do right now um then i think you're going to have a much more comfortable base uh for a democratic movement unless and here's the big caveat which is happening in eastern europe is and this is this is what tucker tucker carlson is reporting out of hungary um unless you have a strong man um uh who you know will sacrifice as with flood in your prudent also is a good example sacrifice all sorts of democratic liberties in order to you know produce some sort of organizational structure which often is not good um to produce you know better um better economic structure also i'm sorry were you talking about hungary or china i was talking about hungary and i was also talking about everybody got it got it got it got it got it i thought you were being serious about okay i got it got it got it okay but but i i think that i want to add this because it's a world war two example you know i mean um we are old enough to have heard our parents talk about musselini and how he you know how he made the trains run on time right and so you know it's that sort of very limited thinking about the society at large that scares me and although there is you know i think as i say to my students you know we're in a period where there's you know insurgency and especially in eastern europe where there's not a lot of democratic traditions of you know right-wing authoritative leaders um but and you'll notice this and this is why i have hope um that even putin has to stand for election um and um even though it's you know a greater period of time um uh that's that's really uh that's that's that's it's still they're democratic democratic traditions that are still in place even though they may be fragile and i have to leave you with one comment because it came out of hawaii and you both will enjoy this it's not really related to the topic but i teach by tangent anyway um is that when uh when president midviete was here in hawaii for the economic summit you guys may remember that he was here for a while he had dinner at the president of punahos house and i'm getting this from my uh long time good friend uh jim scott and um you know he was asked a series of questions and you know he it was before you know he was about to leave and putin was you know running for office again and they asked him they there are two pertinent questions and i'll leave you with this one he was asked um you know is putin going to win and without hesitation and without going through his interpreter he said of course which is you know an indication about you know no american politician would say of course unless they're out of mind yeah we have one who still does who still does say of course yeah but the second question was the most revealing and and someone asked him about well do you have any advice for us and this is you know 10 or 15 years ago about afghanistan and he again didn't go through the interpreter he just said get out and i'll leave you with that that message well i want you to know that i am not running against putin in any election because because i do not want to glow at night but you also you own the means of production you don't need to run for election thank you for that peter peter peter can you make a very brief closing very very and thank you very please well carl we're always great to see and hear you and we hope you we can come up with some other magical reason to get you back um i guess i would leave in one minutes with some concerns in response to what jay said which may only second 30 seconds may open up further discussion one is what kind of capitalist progress are we talking about so in eastern europe we're generally talking about crony capitalism we're not talking about entrepreneurial capitalism and entrepreneur capitalism and the ability of people to have shares is connected to some kind of democracy crony capitalism never is so i'm going to be very careful about that and secondly i would remind you that a voice for democracy and a voice for cosmopolitanism is george soros and i'd like you to think about the hungarian popular and official response to george soros who is a hungarian and is also of course jewish and also of course represents the west i think um i'd say say about jews and racism jews are the canary in the mind george soros is the canary in the mind of whether or not eastern europe will progress and it really is uh strongman versus george soros i leave you with that i think there are two at least two other conversations we can have out of this so carl thanks not just for your contributions but uh lanes and seats for some future fruitful discussions thank you and you say hello to your family congratulations on the professorship of your daughter that's what i call a 30 second closing don't you that much for me for me for you i had a whole different concept of time i had peter hoffenberg carl ackerman thank you so much hello thank you thank you