Evidence receipt / evaluation
Published · transcript-backedStephen Kotkin: evaluation
4 Dec 2024 Conversations with Tyler Stephen Kotkin on Stalin, Power, and the Art of Biography
“The problem with arguments like that, Tyler, is that I got into fights in the schoolyard when I was his age. People beat me up because I was a half Catholic, half Jew at a Catholic school.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Stephen Kotkin
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- evaluation
- Recorded
- 4 Dec 2024
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…Do you think Georgian blood feud culture influenced Stalin at all in this? Yes. So, there were a lot of Georgians and there’s one Stalin. People argue that he got into fights in the schoolyard, and that the fights were nasty, and therefore he became a certain type of person. They argue that his father beat him, and therefore he became a certain type of person. The problem with arguments like that, Tyler, is that I got into fights in the schoolyard when I was his age. People beat me up because I was a half Catholic, half Jew at a Catholic school. This was in Englewood, New Jersey, right?…
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