0:15

Pushkin. This

0:20

episode of Cautionary Tales was

0:23

made an association with HBO

0:25

and their new series The Regime.

0:28

You can stream The Regime now on Max

0:30

and you can find more episodes of

0:32

this show Cautionary Tales wherever

0:35

you get your podcasts.

0:41

On the first of March twenty fourteen,

0:43

the BBC journalist John Simpson

0:46

hailed a taxi with his cameraman

0:49

in Ukraine. The

0:51

BBC had told them to go to Crimea,

0:54

the southern peninsula sticking out

0:56

into the Black Sea. Something

0:59

it seemed was happening there. Nobody

1:02

quite knew what. Simpson

1:06

was. A veteran of foreign affairs. He

1:08

had dodged Chinese bullets in Tienemann

1:10

Square and American bombs in

1:12

Baghdad. He'd smuggled

1:15

himself into war torn Afghanistan

1:17

wearing a burker. If anyone

1:20

could make sense of events in Crimea,

1:23

he could. As the taxi

1:25

approached the thin strip of land

1:28

that connects the Crimean Peninsula to

1:30

the rest of Ukraine, the

1:32

driver had to stop. The

1:35

road was blocked. Men

1:38

with guns and military uniforms beckoned

1:40

the journalist and the cameraman from the car.

1:43

The gunmen were hostile and

1:46

threatening, Simpson wrote.

1:48

They opened the taxis trunk and

1:51

began to rifle aggressively through the

1:53

traveler's bags. He took

1:55

the cameraman's camera. But

1:58

who were these people? Which

2:01

army's uniforms were they in? The

2:04

men at the checkpoint, he realized, were

2:07

stopping everyone except local

2:09

people from passing through. But

2:13

what for? In his long career,

2:16

Simpson had seen it all, but

2:19

it had never seen anything like this. I

2:22

found it hard to work out what was going

2:24

on? He wrote, What

2:28

was going on? I'm

2:31

Tim Harford and you're listening to

2:34

Cautionary Tales.

2:56

This episode of Cautionary Tales

2:59

is something different. Three

3:01

shorter stories with a theme in

3:04

common. It's made possible

3:06

by HBO and their news

3:08

series The Regime, starring

3:10

Kate Winslet as Elaina Vernon,

3:13

the fictional dictator of a country

3:15

in Central Europe. The character

3:18

and the plot are inspired by

3:20

real dictators and real events,

3:23

and our friends at HBO came to us

3:25

with a suggestion could Cautionary

3:28

Tales explore some of the true stories

3:30

behind the drama. I

3:32

talked to Will Tracy, writer of the Regime,

3:35

about what sparked his ideas for

3:37

the show. It's no coincidence

3:40

that Elena Vernon and her husband

3:42

Nicholas share their first names

3:45

with the Chowsheskus who ruled Romania

3:47

in the nineteen seventies and eighties. Will

3:50

told me he read up on the Emperor

3:52

of Ethiopia Highly Selassie,

3:55

the dictator of Syria Bashah al

3:57

Assad, and the presumptive

4:00

president for life of Russia, Vladimir

4:02

Putin. And if you think you

4:05

also see in Kate Winslet's character

4:07

echoes of some war Western politicians

4:10

who may be running for election, I'm

4:12

not going to tell you you're wrong. The

4:15

regime depicts a crisis

4:17

in the dictator's rule, but here

4:20

in the real world, it's democracy.

4:22

It's in crisis. A few years

4:24

ago, the book How Democracies

4:27

Die became a best seller around

4:29

the world. Over a third of under

4:32

thirty fives think that a leader who

4:34

doesn't have to bother with elections

4:37

sounds like a good way to run a country. And

4:40

so this week we present three

4:43

mini tales on a theme

4:45

of dictatorships, three true

4:47

stories and the social science

4:50

that helps explain them. Our

4:52

first tale starts at

4:54

that roadblock in Crimea in twenty

4:56

fourteen. In

5:02

the regime we see dictator

5:04

Elena Vernham reveling in

5:06

the impotent outrage of the United

5:08

States when she takes control of

5:10

the Faban Corridor, a

5:13

disputed piece of land on her country's

5:15

border. An illegal invasion,

5:18

says the US. Nonsense,

5:21

says Elena. No one is proposing

5:23

an invasion, no one.

5:26

This is an expression of peace and love

5:28

towards our countrymen across the border. The

5:31

real life equivalent of the Faban

5:33

Corridor is Crimea, a

5:35

peninsula in the Black Sea that's

5:37

been conquered and reconquered

5:39

by various empires over the centuries.

5:42

After the breakdown of the Soviet Union,

5:45

Crimea became part of Ukraine,

5:47

but Russia kept the right to maintain

5:50

some military bases there. Then,

5:54

at the end of February twenty fourteen,

5:56

something started to happen in Crimea.

6:00

Nobody quite knew what soldiers

6:02

appeared in the streets, or were

6:05

they soldiers. They certainly looked like soldiers.

6:08

They had guns and military style green

6:10

uniforms, but these

6:12

weren't the uniforms of the Russian Army

6:15

or Ukraine's army.

6:17

This mysterious militia soon

6:19

became known as the Little Green

6:21

Men. But who were

6:24

they what was going on. The

6:26

Little Green Men took over the airport,

6:29

They took over Crimea's parliament building

6:32

and hoisted the Russian flag. So

6:35

they were Russian troops. Surely they must

6:38

be. No, no, no, said

6:40

Russia's ambassador to the European Union.

6:43

There are no Russian troops there, none

6:45

whatsoever. The BBC

6:47

told their cameraman and journalist John

6:49

Simpson to take a taxi and investigate.

6:53

They found a roadblock. The Little

6:55

Green Men had taken control of the

6:57

border. Then they surrounded

7:00

Ukrainian military installations. Crimea's

7:03

government announced there'd be a referendum

7:06

on joining Russia. Vladimir

7:08

Putin gave a press conference. Come

7:11

on, said a journalist. These

7:13

men in green uniforms are Russian soldiers,

7:16

aren't they. They must be, Putin

7:18

replied with a straight face. You

7:20

can go to a store and buy any kind of

7:23

uniform. Who are

7:25

they? Then local defense

7:27

forces? Putin shrugged. A

7:30

couple of weeks later, Crimeans

7:32

went to vote under the watchful eyes

7:35

of the Little Green Men. A

7:37

credulity stretching ninety

7:39

seven percent supposedly

7:42

voted yes they wanted to be part of Russia.

7:45

Putin announced the annexation two

7:48

days later. In

7:56

nineteen sixty six, at the height

7:58

of the Cold War, the game theorist

8:01

Thomas Schelling published a book

8:03

called Arms and Influence.

8:07

The Cold War fascinated game theorists.

8:10

How did the two superpowers compete

8:12

for advantage without pushing

8:15

each other into a catastrophic nuclear

8:17

response. One

8:19

answer is what Shelling called salami

8:22

slicing tactics. If

8:24

you try to steal a sausage all at

8:26

once, the owner of the sausage

8:28

is likely to object. But if you take

8:31

just a little slice, you might get away

8:33

with it. Then you wait a while and

8:36

take another and another.

8:40

Salami tactics, says Shelling,

8:43

were surely invented by a child.

8:46

Don't go in the water, a parent tells

8:49

their son. He'll sit on the

8:51

bank, says Shelling, and submerge

8:54

his bare feet. He is not yet

8:56

in the water. You look

8:58

at him and think, hmm, I

9:01

suppose that's okay. Then

9:03

he stands up. No more

9:05

of him in the water than before, says

9:08

Shelling. Now he

9:10

starts paddling around. What

9:13

he says, I'm not going any deeper. Yes

9:16

you did just then, I saw you. Ah,

9:19

But I'm back in the shallows. Now it all

9:21

evens out. You see pretty

9:23

soon, says Shelling. We're

9:25

calling to him not to swim out

9:27

of sight wandering. Whatever

9:30

happened to all our discipline?

9:34

Salami tactics depend on ambiguity,

9:37

says Shelling. We try to draw

9:39

a line. Don't get in the water, but

9:42

what does inn mean? Don't

9:45

invade another country? But what

9:47

about supporting local self

9:50

defense forces. By the time

9:52

it becomes clear that our line has been

9:54

crossed, it's also

9:56

become much more of a hassle to do

9:58

anything about it. We might

10:01

decide to let it slide.

10:03

As any child can tell you, the

10:05

key to successful salami tactics

10:09

sensing just how far you can push

10:11

your luck. In

10:14

the decades since Thomas Schelling wrote

10:17

about salami tactics, the phrase

10:19

has been used widely, but

10:22

not always precisely, says

10:24

the political scientist Richard Mass.

10:27

He suggests a more exact definition

10:30

with crimea in twenty fourteen as

10:33

a perfect illustration. First,

10:36

salami slicing involves a phatocomplee.

10:40

You change the facts on the ground before

10:42

anyone wises up enough to stop you.

10:45

Putin managed that perfectly.

10:48

The little Green men created just enough

10:50

confusion, that nobody was sure what

10:52

was happening until it had happened.

10:55

Next, that phatocompley has

10:58

to be limited enough in scope that

11:00

it won't provoke major retaliation.

11:03

Putin judged that perfectly too.

11:07

The US and EU can planed

11:09

the referendum was

11:12

clearly a sham. They

11:14

imposed some sanctions on Russia

11:16

that actually taking

11:19

Crimea back from Russian control

11:22

would have meant military action, and

11:24

they weren't willing to go that far. There's

11:27

one last vital piece of the

11:30

definition of salami tactics. There

11:32

has to be potential for another

11:34

fatal company to slice

11:37

off another bit of sausage.

11:39

On February twenty fourth, twenty

11:41

twenty two, Russian

11:44

tanks rolled into Ukraine.

11:46

Putin had followed the same playbook

11:49

as before by creating confusion.

11:52

It massed troops on the border, but

11:54

claimed it was just a training exercise.

11:57

Was he really going to mount a full

11:59

on invasion? Even in Russia?

12:02

Many found that hard to believe.

12:05

The plan was to take Kiev quickly

12:08

and present the world with yet another

12:11

fate a complee that this

12:13

time Putin had sliced

12:16

off more sausage than

12:18

he could chew. The assault

12:20

on Kiev was repelled and

12:22

the Russian offensive was pushed back to

12:24

the east of Ukraine. At

12:27

the time of recording this podcast, we're

12:29

two years into the war and

12:32

it's unclear how much territory Russia

12:34

will eventually digest, or

12:37

how tempted Putin might be to

12:39

try for another slice in future.

12:47

How can salami tactics be

12:49

countered? There's no easy

12:52

answer, says Richard mass. The

12:54

best we can do is be alert and

12:56

try to stop each fay before

12:59

it's a complee.

13:01

But it's not just in geopolitics

13:04

that salami tactics matter. They

13:06

trip us up in parenting. Thomas

13:09

Shelling knew, and

13:11

if you read the best seller How

13:13

Democracies Die, you'll

13:15

be reminded of salami slicing too

13:19

often, say the authors. There

13:21

is no single moment in

13:23

which an elected regime obviously

13:26

crosses the line into dictatorship.

13:29

Instead, there are many little

13:31

steps that gradually erode

13:33

the norms and institutions of democracy.

13:37

Doze off, and we might wake

13:39

up to find that democracy has

13:41

died. We have to stay

13:43

alert. Cautionary

13:46

Tales will be back with another true

13:48

story about dictatorships after

13:51

the break.

14:03

A running joke in the regime is

14:05

that Dictator Elena Vernon has

14:08

an unhealthy obsession with

14:10

healthy air. She's convinced

14:13

that she's breathing in dangerous

14:15

mycotoxins because the air

14:17

in her palace is too moist,

14:20

so she fills the palace with dehumidifiers

14:23

and insists on an aid. Following

14:25

her round with a hygrometer, a

14:28

newly recruited lackey is advised

14:31

never breathe in her direction. Stay

14:34

calm, don't vomit.

14:39

It's comical, but it's based on reality.

14:42

Autocrats seem to have a strange tendency

14:44

towards germaphobia. When

14:48

the COVID pandemic hit in twenty

14:51

twenty, world leaders reacted

14:54

in very different ways. The

14:56

UK's Prime Minister, Boris Johnson

14:59

proudly and unwisely

15:01

said he'd been shaking hands with everyone

15:04

on a visit to a hospital with COVID

15:06

patients. Vladimir Putin

15:08

meanwhile retreated to a palace

15:11

outside Moscow and began to

15:13

conduct government business by video

15:15

call. So far, so unremarkable,

15:19

But that was just the start. According

15:22

to media reports, Putin installed

15:24

a special disinfection tunnel

15:27

for visitors to his palace. It

15:29

looks like one of those walk through

15:31

body scanners at airport's security,

15:34

only this metal box bathed

15:36

you in ultraviolet light and

15:38

sprayed you with an aerosol mist

15:41

of disinfectant solution that

15:44

likely wouldn't have done much to halt the

15:46

spread of COVID, so Putin took

15:48

more precautions. Anyone who wanted

15:50

to see him in person first

15:52

had to quarantine. The head

15:55

of the state owned oil company

15:57

was said to be spending two or three weeks

15:59

a month in quarantine just

16:02

to have brief meetings with the president.

16:05

Others made do with the video

16:07

calls. Putin

16:09

is not alone. Other dictators

16:12

have had similar obsessions about health

16:14

and hygiene. Adolf Hitler

16:17

washed his hands to kill bacteria

16:19

as often as a surgeon does, according

16:22

to a biography of his personal doctor.

16:25

Kim Jong Un is reported to travel

16:27

round North Korea with his own

16:30

portable toilet. It would

16:32

be unthinkable for the Supreme

16:35

leader to use a public restroom.

16:38

Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein reportedly

16:40

required that anyone who was to meet

16:43

him must first take a shower under

16:45

the supervision of his guards. He was

16:47

once filmed lecturing a village

16:50

mayor about how it's not appropriate

16:53

to be out in public smelling

16:55

stinky. Stories

16:57

like this are common enough to seem like a

17:00

trend, so what's

17:02

going on. Perhaps

17:04

it's just part of a wider paranoia

17:06

that inflicts dictators. In

17:09

nineteen seventy eight, the Romanian dictator

17:11

Nikolai Chousescu and his wife

17:14

Elena came to London for

17:16

a state visit. Queen Elizabeth

17:18

was not amused because other

17:21

heads of state had warned her what

17:23

to expect. The President

17:25

of France told his British counterpart

17:28

that when the Chouchescu stayed in Paris,

17:30

they ripped all the wiring

17:32

out of the walls, presumably looking

17:35

for listening devices. They also

17:37

stole all the ashtrays. The

17:40

Queen asked her government, do

17:42

I really have to have this man in Buckingham

17:44

Palace? Yes, said

17:46

the government. We're trying to agree

17:49

a deal to make British airplanes

17:51

in Romanian factories, and a

17:53

state visit is part of the price.

17:56

Nicolay and Elena admired

17:58

the pomp and ceremony of the British

18:00

monarchy. They wanted glamorous

18:02

video footage of themselves in a horse

18:05

drawn open topped carriage

18:07

to show off on Romanian state television,

18:11

so the queen told her staff to

18:13

keep an eye on the ashtrays and stop

18:15

anyone pulling wires out of the walls.

18:18

Nikolai was sure the palace must

18:21

be bugged, so he got his entourage

18:23

up at six am to hold

18:25

furtive meetings in the garden that

18:29

amused the palace staff, but

18:31

the dictator's other quirks offended

18:33

them. When offered food, he'd

18:36

insist that a minder taste it first,

18:38

they might be trying to poison him.

18:41

Then there was the germophobia. After

18:44

he shook hands with anyone royal

18:46

or otherwise, Chasescu would

18:48

summon a lackey to pour rubbing alcohol

18:51

over his hands to disinfect them.

18:54

By the end of the visit, says one royal

18:57

biographer, Queen Elizabeth had

18:59

become so desperate to avoid

19:02

her unwonted guests that she did

19:04

something she had never done before

19:07

and would never do again. Walking

19:10

her corgiars in the palace gardens,

19:13

she spotted the Chowschescus in the distance

19:16

heading towards her. They hadn't

19:18

seen her yet, so she

19:21

jumped into a bush

19:23

and hid. Paranoia

19:27

is one explanation for the apparent germaphobic

19:30

tendency of many autocrats, but

19:33

I wonder if something more is going on.

19:37

In twenty fourteen, researchers

19:39

Randy Thornhill and Corey Fincher

19:42

published a book called The Parasite

19:44

Stress Theory of Values

19:47

and Sociality. You're

19:49

more likely to catch an infectious disease

19:51

in some parts of the world than in others,

19:53

they point out, Likewise, the

19:56

risk varies from one time period

19:59

to another. Thornhill and

20:01

Fincher make the case that these differing

20:03

disease risks explain a surprising

20:06

amount of difference in cultures and values.

20:09

For example, when people feel

20:11

at high risk from pathogens,

20:14

the authors argue that tends

20:16

to manifest in more conservative

20:18

and authoritarian politics,

20:21

marked by suspicion of outsiders

20:23

and demands for conformity and obedience.

20:27

When people aren't so worried about infectious

20:29

disease, they tend to be more welcoming

20:31

of newcomers and open to diverse

20:34

ways of doing things. Later,

20:37

researchers looked at the twenty sixteen

20:39

US election. They found that places

20:42

with greater prevalence of infectious disease

20:45

voted more heavily for Donald

20:47

Trump. In twenty

20:49

twenty, as the COVID pandemic

20:51

loomed on the horizon, researchers

20:53

at the University of British Columbia saw

20:56

a unique chance to conduct a real

20:58

time test of the idea that

21:00

health warriors predict authoritarian

21:02

attitudes. They quickly put together

21:05

a survey asking people how

21:07

concerned are you by this new US coronavirus.

21:10

They also asked if people agreed or

21:12

disagreed with a range of statements that

21:15

reflect authoritarian values,

21:17

such as what our country needs most

21:20

is discipline, with everyone

21:22

following our leaders in unity. On

21:25

the day of the survey, at the start of

21:27

March, life was still pretty

21:30

normal. Lockdowns were a couple

21:32

more weeks away. There'd been just a few

21:34

dozen confirmed cases of COVID

21:37

in the US. Boris Johnson

21:39

was proudly shaking hands at a British

21:41

hospital. The researchers waited

21:43

a few weeks and repeated the survey

21:46

when cases were much more widespread.

21:49

Sure enough, in this second

21:51

survey, people were not only more

21:53

worried about COVID, they were also

21:56

more likely to endorse authoritarian

21:58

attitudes. I

22:00

wonder if this research tells us something

22:03

about germaphobia among autocrats.

22:06

If threats to our health make us more

22:08

authority, maybe it shouldn't

22:10

surprise us if dictators are

22:13

among the biggest hypochondriacs

22:15

of all. We'll

22:18

be back with our third story after

22:21

the break.

22:37

One of the most poignant moments in

22:39

the regime is a conversation

22:42

between the dictator Elena and

22:44

the palace manager Agnes. Agnes's

22:47

some that suffers from epilepsy and

22:49

needs modern medicine, but Elena

22:52

has been insisting that all he really

22:54

needs are traditional folk remedies.

22:58

Nobody dares disagree with her. When

23:01

Agnes finally admits to Elena that

23:03

the folk remedies aren't working and

23:06

begs for real medicine, Elena

23:08

agreed, but she also

23:11

cruelly punishes Agnes for

23:13

not telling the truth. Elena

23:16

insists truth is

23:18

so important, That's

23:20

what this third and final

23:23

part of our cautionary tale is about. Truth

23:26

in a world that would prefer a lie.

23:33

Deep under the Don Basin,

23:35

to the north of the Black Sea and the east

23:37

of Ukraine lie some of Russia's

23:40

richest seams of coal, not

23:43

a resource to be squandered. In

23:46

nineteen oh one, a twenty six

23:48

year old mining engineer named Peter

23:50

Palchinsky had been sent by the

23:52

Tsar's government to study the area's

23:55

coal mines. A photograph

23:57

of Palchinsky shows him with heavy

24:00

eyelids under arched eyebrows,

24:03

a high forehead, starched collar,

24:05

and a wispy goatee beard. He

24:08

looks slightly surprised and

24:11

also like his trying to neden

24:13

up for the camera, but hasn't quite

24:15

managed it. Palchinsky

24:17

came from a poor family, the oldest

24:19

of twelve siblings and step siblings. Yet

24:22

despite lacking money and connections,

24:25

he married well to Nina, who

24:28

was bright, well educated, and

24:30

politically active, and he

24:32

rose to positions of high responsibility

24:35

thanks to his sharp intelligence and

24:37

relentless energy. Palchinsky

24:40

was worried by what he saw in the Don Basins

24:42

mining communities. The miners

24:45

were being housed forty or even sixty

24:47

to a room, stacked in shared

24:49

wooden bunks, like cheap goods in a

24:52

warehouse. Palchinsky

24:54

knew what it was to be poor, and

24:56

this was no way to treat hard working

24:59

men a greater asset than

25:01

any seam of coal. Palchinsky

25:04

put together a dossier on these working conditions.

25:06

And sent it to his superiors. They

25:09

decided it would be best if young

25:12

Peter Palchinski were sent

25:14

somewhere less politically

25:16

sensitive for his next assignment,

25:19

namely Siberia.

25:23

Palchinski eventually managed to

25:25

slip away to Western Europe, where

25:28

he soaked up the latest industrial

25:30

knowledge. He wrote back to

25:32

the very superiors who defectively

25:34

exiled him, suggesting ways in

25:36

which the Russian economy might be reformed

25:38

along Western lines. He

25:41

also wrote love letters to his wife Nina,

25:44

in which he cheerfully confessed to an

25:46

affair. This was a man

25:48

who just had to blurt out

25:50

the truth, no matter what the

25:53

consequences might be. Palchinski

25:57

eventually returned to Russia, narrowly

25:59

escaped being bayoneted during the

26:01

Revolution of nineteen seventeen, and

26:04

secured a position providing engineering

26:07

advice to the Communist government

26:09

of the new Soviet Union. But

26:12

his compulsive honesty continued.

26:15

At a time when everyone was joining

26:18

professional associations controlled

26:20

by the Communist Party, he refused

26:23

on the grounds that engineering advice

26:26

should not be distorted by politics.

26:29

Even drafted a letter to the Soviet

26:31

Prime Minister offering the helpful

26:34

observation that technology

26:36

and science were more important than

26:38

communism. His alarmed

26:41

friends persuaded him not to send

26:43

it. What

26:46

Palchinsky did send to the authorities

26:48

was a series of bracingly frank

26:50

critiques of their prestige industrial

26:53

projects. Stalin wanted

26:55

to build a vast hydroelectric

26:57

dam, the Lenin Dam, across

27:00

the Dnipa River in what is now Ukraine.

27:03

Palchinsky dismantled the idea

27:06

point by point. The

27:08

Danipa moved slowly through a floodplain,

27:11

so the Lenin Dam would flood

27:13

huge areas of valuable farmland

27:16

and many thousands of homes.

27:19

It would generate little electricity

27:21

and none at all in the dry season. As

27:24

an alternative, Palchinsky proposed

27:26

a series of smaller dams supplemented

27:29

with coal fired power stations, which

27:32

would be much cheaper, more efficient,

27:35

and more reliable. But

27:37

this technical critique was missing the point.

27:40

Stalin wanted to build the world's

27:43

largest hydroelectric dam,

27:45

and he did. The project

27:47

was an economic and engineering

27:50

failure, which devastated

27:52

the local ecosystem and required

27:55

ten thousand farmers to

27:57

be forcibly relocated. The

28:00

next project on Palchinsky's radar

28:03

was Magneta Gorsk, the city

28:05

of Magnet Mountain. This

28:07

remote mountain to the east of

28:09

Moscow was packed with

28:12

iron ore, and next

28:14

to it, the Soviet authorities planned

28:16

to build vast steel mills

28:19

capable of out matching the entire

28:21

steel output of the United Kingdom,

28:24

along with their garden city

28:27

to house workers. Palchinsky

28:30

delivered another frank analysis

28:32

without a detailed study of the area's

28:35

geology. Was there really as

28:37

much iron in Magnet Mountain as

28:39

people thought? And where

28:41

would the coal come from to fire these

28:44

mighty steel mills. His

28:46

old studies of worker conditions

28:49

in the coal mines of the Don Basin

28:51

also led him to worry about

28:54

the fate of Magnetogorsk's workers.

28:57

Palchinsky's warnings were again

29:00

ignored, and again were

29:03

all too accurate. Workers

29:06

and their families were shipped to the site

29:08

in wagons in conditions

29:11

rarely seen outside Nazi Germany's

29:13

concentration camps. One

29:16

witness who traveled there as a child

29:18

later recalled for a day

29:20

and a half the door was not even

29:23

opened. Mothers had

29:25

children die in their arms

29:28

from only the wagon in which we traveled.

29:31

Four little corpses were removed.

29:35

Over three thousand people

29:37

died in the first winter of

29:40

construction work and

29:42

the iron ran out. Eventually, just

29:45

as Palchinsky had feared it would, Magnetogorsk

29:49

turned into a crumbling hub

29:51

of shortages and alcoholism,

29:55

described by one historian as

29:57

blighted by almost unfathomable

30:00

pollution and a health

30:02

catastrophe impossible

30:05

to exaggerate. Palchinsky

30:08

had to the truth and been right

30:11

again. That was

30:14

a dangerous habit. In

30:21

the early nineteen nineties, a

30:23

young researcher named Amy Edmondson

30:26

was studying the performance of medical

30:28

teams at two Massachusetts hospitals.

30:32

She had a simple and intuitive

30:34

theory. Good teams make

30:36

fewer mistakes, Yet

30:38

the numbers told a very different story.

30:41

The teams who displayed the best teamwork

30:44

were also the ones making the most mistakes.

30:48

What on earth was happening? Edmondson

30:52

figured it out. Eventually, the

30:54

best teams didn't make more

30:56

errors, they admitted more

30:58

errors. Dysfunctional teams

31:01

admitted to very few, for

31:03

the simple reason that nobody in those

31:05

teams felt safe to own

31:08

up to making a mistake. The

31:11

time worn euphemism for a screw

31:13

up is a learning experience,

31:16

but Edmundson's insight suggests

31:19

that the cliche has teeth. How

31:22

can a mistake be a learning experience

31:25

if nobody will admit that the mistake

31:27

ever happened. Peter

31:29

Balchinsky had been sent to Siberia

31:32

for his frank advice to the czar, and

31:34

his friends had begged him not to repeat

31:36

the trick with Joseph Stalin. They

31:39

knew that they lived in a society where

31:42

telling the truth could get you killed.

31:45

In nineteen thirty seven, for example, the

31:47

Soviet Union carried out its first

31:50

population census in eleven

31:52

years. It was, says

31:55

one historian, exceptionally

31:57

thorough and complete. That

32:00

was awkward, since the census

32:02

count was eight million,

32:04

shy of official projections, the

32:07

consequence of the catastrophe famine

32:10

caused by Stalin's policies, which

32:12

had struck regions such as Ukraine

32:14

and Kazakhstan in the early nineteen thirties.

32:18

The statisticians responsible for

32:20

the census were promptly arrested

32:23

and executed, and the census

32:25

itself was suppressed. Future

32:28

statisticians would not make the same

32:31

mistake. A replacement

32:33

census swiftly reinstated

32:35

the missing eight million, and

32:37

no further census was conducted

32:40

for twenty years.

32:42

Some time after Stalin's death.

32:47

Amy Edmondson argues that you don't need

32:49

to go to a dictatorship to find people

32:52

who don't feel it's wise to point

32:54

out problems with their organizations.

32:57

Nobody in a modern business expects

33:00

to be executed for telling the truth,

33:03

but they might well expect to be bullied,

33:05

passed over for promotion, or

33:08

fired. It all depends on

33:10

the corporate culture. Edmondson

33:13

popularized the idea of psychological

33:16

safety, when people feel

33:18

they can speak openly to each other about

33:20

problems, learning from mistakes,

33:23

and fixing them. But

33:25

psychological safety doesn't happen

33:27

by accident. Edmondson

33:30

gives the example of the aluminium

33:32

company Alcoa. When

33:34

Paul O'Neill became the boss in nineteen

33:37

eighty seven, he set the apparently

33:39

unachievable target of zero

33:43

workplace injuries. That

33:45

was smart, not only as a safer

33:48

workplace the right thing to aim for, but

33:50

that target encouraged workers

33:52

to focus on detail, quality

33:55

and proper processes. Except

33:58

how to make sure that teams

34:01

on the factory floor actually

34:03

focused on safety, rather

34:06

than getting the message that they should

34:08

simply loss over minor accidents

34:11

and near misses. O'Neill's

34:13

approach was simple and direct.

34:16

He wrote to every worker, giving

34:19

them his personal phone number and

34:21

asking them to call him if there were

34:23

any safety violations. That's

34:26

what it takes to create psychological

34:29

safety.

34:34

Without psychological safety, people

34:36

learn to avoid speaking uncomfortable

34:39

truths. But when the

34:41

truth becomes impossible to utter,

34:44

society disappears into a

34:46

maze of illusions. It's

34:49

only a matter of time before everything

34:52

falls apart. It's

34:54

easy to forget how successful

34:57

the Soviet system was for a

34:59

time. Yes, it was

35:01

brutal and repressive. Yes, millions

35:04

died in famines caused by senseless

35:06

policies, hundreds of thousands

35:08

died in prison, but the

35:11

economy industrialized and grew

35:13

quickly. Many Western

35:15

economists speculated that

35:17

the Soviet economy would eventually

35:20

overtake that of the United States.

35:23

That never happened, because

35:26

the more the Soviet economy grew,

35:28

the more important it was to

35:30

get feedback about which projects

35:33

were working and which were not. With

35:36

the truth choked off, the

35:38

Soviet system became incapable

35:41

of distinguishing success from

35:43

failure. One

35:50

I see Leningrad Night. In

35:52

April nineteen twenty eight, there

35:55

was a knock on the door of Peter Polchinsky's

35:58

apartment. He was arrested

36:01

by the Secret police and

36:03

was never seen by his wife again. Many

36:08

years left, the historian

36:10

Lauren Graham managed to unearth

36:13

a secret police dossier on Palchinsky,

36:16

documenting crimes

36:19

such as publishing detailed

36:21

statistics and trying

36:23

to set minimal goals, in

36:26

other words, trying to figure

36:28

out and then tell the truth about what

36:31

was possible and what was not. Palchinsky

36:35

was not alone. Three thousand

36:38

of the country's ten thousand engineers

36:41

were arrested in the late nineteen twenties

36:43

and early nineteen thirties and

36:46

either imprisoned or sent

36:48

to Siberia. Alongside

36:50

them was Palchinsky's wife, Nina,

36:53

who died there. Peter

36:56

Palchinsky met a different fate.

36:59

Truthful to the end, he refused

37:02

to confess to crimes he had not committed,

37:05

and so he was executed.

37:08

The truth killed him,

37:11

of course it did, and

37:14

the lack of truth killed the

37:16

Soviet Union. In July

37:18

nineteen eighty nine, the first

37:21

major strike in Soviet history

37:23

began. A quarter of

37:25

a million coal miners walked

37:27

away from their jobs, protesting

37:29

against grotesquely unsafe conditions

37:32

and simple deprivations, no

37:35

meat, no fruit, no soap,

37:38

and no hot water. After

37:41

risking their lives each day in the

37:43

suffocating depths, miners

37:45

couldn't even wash. The

37:48

last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail

37:50

Gorbachev, was forced to appear

37:53

on national television offering substantial

37:55

concessions. The

37:58

strike is far less famous than

38:00

the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it

38:02

was a decisive moment in

38:05

the downfall of the Soviet system.

38:08

The miners who walked out and humiliated

38:10

Gorbachev worked, of all

38:12

places in the Don Basin.

38:16

It was eighty eight years

38:19

since Peter Polchinsky had documented

38:22

the problem of working conditions in the

38:24

Don coal mines. From

38:27

the beginning of the Soviet Union to

38:29

its end, the country's leaders

38:32

had managed to block out the truths

38:35

they really needed to hear. A

38:44

year on from Russia's twenty twenty

38:46

two invasion of Ukraine, an

38:48

anonymous Russian official told

38:51

The Financial Times, it's

38:53

all gone horribly wrong. The

38:55

idea was never for hundreds of thousands

38:58

of people to die. Putin

39:00

had badly misjudged the strength

39:03

of the Russian army and the strength

39:05

of the Ukrainian's will to fight. But

39:08

why had this salami slice

39:11

failed when the annexation of

39:13

Crimea in twenty fourteen had

39:15

been so successful. One

39:17

source gave The Financial Times a familiar

39:20

explanation, nobody

39:23

can tell Putin the truth. But

39:26

another explanation is more surprising.

39:29

Isolated behind his disinfection

39:32

tunnel during the COVID pandemic,

39:34

Putin had too much time to

39:37

brood on the perceived injustices

39:39

of the past. When historians

39:42

come to debate the causes of the war

39:44

in Ukraine, germaphobia

39:47

may be among them.

39:54

The three themes explored in this

39:56

episode of Cautionary Tales, germaphobia,

40:00

truth telling, and salami tactics

40:02

were inspired by HBO's new

40:05

series The Regime, starring Kate

40:07

Winslet as the fiction dictator

40:09

Elena Vernon. You can

40:11

stream episodes of The Regime now

40:14

on Max. Next

40:17

Time on Cautionary Tales, the second

40:19

of our two episodes inspired

40:22

by The Regime looks at how

40:24

dictatorships end. Join

40:26

us for the true story of

40:29

what brought down Nikolai and

40:31

Elina Chashescu. The

40:36

definitive source on the life and death

40:38

of Peter Palchinski is Lauren Graham's

40:41

The Ghost of the Executed Engineer.

40:44

For a full list of our sources, see the

40:46

show notes at Timharford dot

40:49

com. You've been

40:51

listening to Cautionary Tales with me Tim

40:53

Harford, which you can find wherever

40:55

you get your podcasts. Cautionary

41:04

Tales is written by me Tim Harford

41:06

with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice

41:09

Finds with support from Marilyn Rust.

41:11

The sound design and original music is

41:14

the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah

41:16

Nix edited the scripts. It

41:18

features the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie

41:21

Guttridge, Stella Harford, Jemmy

41:23

Saunders and Rufus Wright. The

41:26

show also wouldn't have been possible

41:28

without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan

41:30

Dilly, Greta Cohne, Dital

41:32

Mollard, John Schnaz, Eric Handler,

41:35

Carrie Brody and Christina Sullivan.

41:38

Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin

41:41

Industries. It's recorded at

41:43

Wardoor Studios in London by

41:45

Tom Berry. If you like

41:47

the show, please remember

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