A TIME 100 Symposium

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Tim Sloan / AFP / Getty

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

(10 of 17)

ROSE: Irving?

KRISTOL: I think the media has a moral problem which it is not accustomed to having.

ROSE: Well, that's news?

KRISTOL: Yeah. Which is, you know, to use that term, greatness, for the bad guys and the good guys. I really don't think Winston Churchill or Franklin Roosevelt would be pleased to see themselves on the cover of TIME Magazine along with Hitler and Stalin as four great leaders of this century. I think we have to make up our minds. Either include the bad guys or leave them out. I would leave them out. I don't want my grandchildren to study about Hitler or Stalin, particularly —

CUOMO: Why not?

KRISTOL: Forget about them. Stop, who's, why study Ivan the Terrible? Why study Atilla the Hun? You learn bad things when you study them.

[Laughter]

[Simultaneous conversation.]

[Laughter]

KRISTOL: You would study Hitler?

CUOMO: You don't really mean you want us to forget Adolph Hitler?

KRISTOL: Not us, no. I mean, of course —

[Simultaneous conversation.]

KRISTOL: —pleased in the year 2050 if younger people had forgotten Adolph Hitler.

[Simultaneous conversation.]

CUOMO: You have to study the evil people even more than you have to study the good ones, just to avoid what they've done.

KRISTOL: That's what Machiavelli said, only he said, to learn.

CUOMO: Well, what Machiavelli, Machiavelli comes from Northern Italy.

[Laughter]

CUOMO: The, the, it was not, it was not many years after the World War II that I tried, as a Lt. Governor, which is you think the Vice President is a problem, as Lt. Governor in New York State to get the holocaust studies as part of the curriculum in New York State. And I was resisted by the Board of Regents for three years. And I asked at one point, why? And was told that, well, you know, there's a dispute about the Holocaust. Now, that was not many years after the Second World War and, and the notion of allowing people to forget what Adolph Hitler represented and what he did is, is, is to me staggering. So, of course, you must take into account —

[Simultaneous conversation.]

KRISTOL: They won't forget.

CUOMO: Well, we shouldn't let them.

KRISTOL: There are only 50, 75 years ahead —

CUOMO: We shouldn't let them.

KRISTOL: Of course, they will forget. Jews, I think, will not forget.

CUOMO: It's not just Jews.

KRISTOL: But we Jews are only a small portion of the human race though some people might occasionally think otherwise. I think in the end if you want to say, great leaders, go for the good guys. We will have enough disputes about the good guys.

CUOMO: Would you put Newt Gingrich's face on TIME Magazine?

KRISTOL: That's the media picking politicians. I mean we're not talking about great leaders.

[Simultaneous conversation.]

CUOMO: Would he have been a good guy, would he have been a sufficient good guy to warrant a place on the TIME cover by your standard?

KRISTOL: For the week, yes.

[Laughter]RICE: I'm going to try another word. I think you can talk about influential people. I, I would agree with Irving. I don't want to talk about Stalin as great. I do want to talk about Stalin as influential. And, indeed, more influential than Lenin because I think that Lenin comes to power at a particular time, as he said, grabbing power which was just resting in the street. And he has a kind of utopian view when he comes to power and we don't know really what would have happened if Lenin would have survived longer than the seven years that he did. It is really Joseph Stalin that made the Soviet Union into what the Soviet Union became. Militarized, secretive, a Byzantine State behind the walls of the Kremlin, a State with pretensions of greatness on the international scene, a State that then ate and subordinated and suppressed Eastern Europe for almost 50 years. It's Joseph Stalin that is really the legacy of the Soviet Union, not Lenin;.

ROSE: But is it the ideology of Marx or the ideology of Lenin or the power of Stalin that seemed to have influenced Mao Tse Tung and people in China and Ho Chi Minh and so many other people who rose to lead nationalist revolutions and have a significant influence in their country or their region?

RICE: Well, I don't mean to absolve Lenin. I think he might have turned out to be absolutely terrible, too. Because my own view is that the extension of Marxism is Stalin. That those who wish to make Marxism something other than what the Soviet Union became don't understand that when you start to put in practice a philosophy that degrades the individual to the degree that Marxism does, you get the Soviet Union. So, I'm not absolving Lenin. I think though that the particular alchemy of power and this ideology that was the Soviet Union is really not the legacy of Mao and others. That's a different kind of extension of Leninism and Marxism.

ROSE: Whatever category we have to put Stalin and Hitler in, which one is more influential in the 20th century?

RICE: Oh, that's a tough one. Well, Hitler was defeated and Stalin was not at least for a few more years. I guess I would say, Stalin.

ROSE: Well, which one had the most influence on the remainder of the century?

RICE: I think Joseph Stalin. Joseph Stalin had the most influence on the rest of the century because of his pretension to an international empire the Soviet Union did make an impact in far-flung territories: Africa, Asia, Latin America, Central America, that I think we cannot attribute to Adolph Hitler. For, fortunately Adolph Hitler was defeated on the territory of Europe and North Africa.

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