(00:01-00:24) Leadership Lessons
Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand yet another business book, on the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, we commit to reading, dissecting, and analyzing the great books of the Western canon. You know, those books, from Jane Austen to Shakespeare, and everything else in between, that you might have fallen asleep trying to read in high school.

(00:24-00:53) Leadership Lessons
We do this for our listeners, the owner, the entrepreneur, the manager, or the civic leader who doesn't have the time to read, dissect, analyze, and leverage insights from literature to execute leadership best practices in the confusing and chaotic postmodern world we all now inhabit. Welcome to the rescuing of Western civilization at the intersection of literature and leadership. Welcome to the leadership lessons from the Great Books Podcast.

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My name is Haysog Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number 93.

(01:03-01:33) Leadership Lessons
With our book today, an exploration of the ironies, the twists, and the consequences and repercussions of choosing to believe deeply and completely in scientific materialism. A book that answers the question, how would the population of a city or a country, bereft of the language of transcendence, deal with John Milton's Satan?

(01:33-01:59) Leadership Lessons
if he actually showed up in reality. This is a book formerly on the Soviet Union's banned book list that pokes holes in the thin veneer of a Marxist communist worldview built almost entirely on lies, obfuscation, corruption, and a fundamental denial of reality itself.

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Today, we will be discussing the leadership lessons to be gleaned from what my guest co-host today called, before we got started here, a very serious book. And it is a very serious book, but it's written in an unserious sort of way.

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Master, The Master, and Margarita. By Mikhail, I'm going to butcher this middle name. Afanyevich, see, just butchered it. Bulgakov. I'm terrible with the Russian names.

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And I would like to introduce to us and to my listeners, our guest co-host today, who is joining us on this podcast to talk about this book. As a matter of fact, she was the one that turned me on to this book and recommended that I read it after I've slogged through or we've slogged through Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and even Anton Chekhov.

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We are joined today on the podcast by the consultant and corporate trainer, now living in Israel, Daria Rudnik. Hello, Daria. How are you doing today? Hi. Hey, son. Thanks. I'm okay. I'm good.

(03:12-03:36) Leadership Lessons
Thanks for recommending the book. I appreciate it. We're going to have, I think we're going to have a great conversation here talking about this book. As usual, we're not going to read the whole book. We cannot possibly do that on this podcast. We are going to read selections from the book today. And so I'm going to pick up in chapter one of The Master and Margarita.

(03:36-03:57) Leadership Lessons
And we're going to really talk about, at least we're going to open with this idea of, well, we're going to open it with this idea of what it means to talk to a stranger. So from chapter one, from the Master and Margarita, never talk with strangers. And I quote,

(03:58-04:14) Leadership Lessons
Now, Berlioz wanted to prove to the poet that the main thing was not how Jesus was, good or bad, but that the same Jesus was a person, as a person, simply never existed in the world, and that all the stories about him were mere fiction, the most ordinary mythology.

(04:15-04:31) Leadership Lessons
It must be noted that the editor was a well-read man and in his conversation very skillfully pointed to ancient historians, for instance, the famous Philo of Alexandria and the brilliantly educated Flavius Josephus, who never said a word about the existence of Jesus.

(04:31-04:48) Leadership Lessons
Displaying a solid erudition, Mikhail Aleksandrovich also informed the poet, among other things, that the passage in the 15th book of Tacitus' famous Annals, the 44th chapter where mention is made of the execution of Jesus, was nothing but a later spurious interpolation.

(04:50-05:16) Leadership Lessons
The poet, for whom everything the editor was telling him was new, listened attentively to Mikhail Aleksandrovich, fixing his pert green eyes on him and merely hiccuped from time to time, cursing the apricot soda under his breath. There's not a single Eastern religion, Berlioz was saying, in which, as a rule, an immaculate virgin did not give birth to a god. And in just the same way, without inventing anything new, the Christians created their Jesus, who in fact never lived. It's on this that the main emphasis should be placed.

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Berlioz's high tenor rang out on the deserted walk, and as Mikhail Aleksandrovich went deeper into the maze, which only a highly educated man can go into without risking a broken neck, the poet learned more and more interesting and useful things about the Egyptian Osiris, the benevolent god and the son of heaven and earth, and about the Phoenician god Temus, and about Marduk, and even about the lesser-known terrible god Vizlipuzli, once greatly venerated by the Aztecs in Mexico.

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And just at that moment, when Mikhail Aleksandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs used to fashion figurines of vizlipuzli out of dough, the first man appeared in the walk.

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afterwards when frankly speaking it was already too late the various institutions presented reports describing this man a comparison of them cannot but cause amazement thus the first of them said that the man was short had gold teeth and limped on his right leg the second that the man was enormously tall had platinum crowns and limped on his left leg the third laconically averred that the man had no distinguishing marks it must be acknowledged that none of these reports is of any value

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First of all, the man described did not limp on any leg and was neither short nor enormous, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he had platinum crowns on the left side and gold on the right. He was wearing an expensive gray suit and important shoes of a matching color. His gray beret was cocked rakishly over one ear. Under his arm, he carried a stick with a black knob shaped like a poodle's head. He looked to be a little over 40. Mouth somehow twisted, clean-shaven, dark-haired, right eye black, left, for some reason, green.

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dark eyebrows, one higher than the other, in short, a foreigner. Having passed by the bench on which the editor and the poet were sitting, the foreigner gave them a sidelong look, stopped, and suddenly sat down on the next bench, two steps away from the friends. A German thought Berlioz, an Englishman thought homeless. My, he must be hot in those gloves.

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The foreigner gazed around at the tall buildings that rectangularly framed the pond, making it obvious that he was seeing the place for the first time and that it interested him. He rested his glance at the upper floors where the glass dazzlingly reflected the broken up sun, which was forever departing from Mikhail Aleksandrovich, then shifted it lower down to where the windows were beginning to darken before evening. Smiling condescendingly at something, narrowed his eyes, put his hands on the knob and his chin on his hands.

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For instance, Ivan Berlioz was saying, you portrayed the birth of Jesus, the son of God, very well and satirically, but the gist of it is that a whole series of sons of God were born before Jesus, like, say, the Phoenician Adonis, Phrygian Attis, the Persian Mithras. And to put it briefly, not one of them was born or ever existed, Jesus included, and what's necessary is that instead of portraying his birth or, suppose, the coming of the Magi, you portray the absurd rumors of their coming. Otherwise, it follows from your story that he was really born.

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Here, Homeless made an attempt to stop his painful hiccuping by holding his breath, which caused him to hiccup more painfully and loudly at the same moment. Berlioz interrupted his speech because the foreigner suddenly got up and walked towards the writers. They looked at him in surprise. Excuse me, please, the approaching man began speaking with a foreign accent, but without distorting the words. If, not being your acquaintance, I allow myself...

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But the subject of your learning conversation is so interesting that... Mikhail...

(08:55-09:17) Leadership Lessons
Not going to try that middle name. Just not. Bulgakov. Mikhail Bulgakov. Born May 15, 1891. Died March 10, 1940. Was a Russian and later Soviet writer, medical doctor, and playwright. Was highly active in the first half of the 20th century.

(09:18-09:36) Leadership Lessons
He wrote sensitively about the horrors of the Russian Civil War and about the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist army caught up in the White Revolution or the Bolshevik Revolution and the subsequent Civil War.

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Some of his works, Flight, all of his works that were written between the years 1922 and 1926 and many others were banned by the Soviet government. And personally, by Joseph Stalin, after it was decided by them and by Stalin, that they, quote unquote, glorified emigration and white generals.

(10:00-10:18) Leadership Lessons
Volgakov was, and in all my research about him and reading about him, near as I could tell, he was a sensitive man that was born into insensitive times. He was a person who felt emotionally deeply about what was happening in his country.

(10:18-10:47) Leadership Lessons
but did not have a political bone in his body. And this tension between not having that political bone in his body and the political things that were happening in his time came out in artistic, or manifested itself in artistic ways. He wrote plays, he wrote ballets, he wrote novels. And The Master and the Margarita was probably his most transcendent novel of

(10:47-11:10) Leadership Lessons
But it's also his most satirical. And, well, this is some of the tension that we're going to talk about today on the podcast. How do you, how does an artist, how does a writer, how does a creator, how does a leader, how do you deal with the tension in a society where you may not care about politics? But politics cares very much about you.

(11:10-11:33) Leadership Lessons
And how do you deal with a lack of language, which is something we're very consumed with on this podcast. We talked about it before. How do you deal with a lack of language around the transcendent when chaos, despair, and even destruction show up? How do you put it in a box if you don't have words to describe it?

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I personally am obsessed with this idea because I do believe that fundamentally in America, in this part of the 21st century, and Daria from Israel may disagree with me from where she's sitting, or she may agree, I don't know. But I think in America, we're done with the postmodern experiment. We're done with postmodern nihilism. And we're grasping around searching for some other language that can describe the world.

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We've abandoned religious language, which is the only language fundamentally that can describe many of the transcendent things that happen in the world. And thus, we have no defense when Satan does indeed show up. And Satan always does. With that, I'd like to welcome Daria to the podcast. And I'd like to find out from her...

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Her very first question, why should leaders read The Master and Margarita? And how did you come to this book? Talk to us a little bit about your background, your journey to this book, and what Mikhail Bulgakov has done and has meant for you in your life. Great question. My full name is Daria Leonidovna Rudnik.

(12:55-13:16) Daria Rudnik
You're not going to say it. I'm not going to try. I'm not going to try. Not going to try. Originally born in Russia and like having to read Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov at school. It's like part of the program. And I read it since then a couple more times and recently in English for the first time.

(13:19-13:47) Daria Rudnik
I'm going to ask you, by the way, today about what the differences are in translation, because I think we miss things from the original Russian that matter in English, but maybe I'm wrong. Go ahead. It was good. It really is good. This translation, this copy is good because I feel this spirit. It's the same feeling I have while reading it in English. Okay. And at some point, it's even...

(13:47-14:06) Daria Rudnik
Like some things are even more obvious, like the name of the behemoth, which is in Russian, it's the same, but it's kind of the same meaning as hippopotamus. And kind of, it didn't occur to me that it's actually not that animal. It's behemoth. Oh, oh, oh.

(14:09-14:31) Leadership Lessons
Well, talk a little bit about reading this in Russia. Like, what is that? What is it? What is it like reading it? I know what it's like reading it in America in the 20 in the 21st century, you know, in 2024, with everything that goes on in America. Right. That's the background I come to it with. But you clearly come to it with a obviously come to it with a different sort of background. So what is it like reading Bolkov in in in in Russia? What is that like?

(14:36-15:01) Daria Rudnik
I'm really curious how kids read it in school now because of the changing narrative about Stalin and everything that's happening. But when we read it, it was a satire on the Stalin regime and the way people lived there. As well as kind of the...

(15:01-15:20) Daria Rudnik
Demonstration of the Soviet life that we still lived at that time. And we could recognize some of the things that were happening in this. Funny to see it and recognize it. And now we don't have those Soviet attributes that they changed.

(15:21-15:47) Daria Rudnik
But the narrative about Stalin also changed and like they're getting back the monuments of Stalin back, the signs of them back. So it's kind of getting back them as a heroic lead or something like that. So I don't know how they do it now, but then it was kind of like a,

(15:49-16:16) Leadership Lessons
Like a wind of something that is, the world can be different, that you can see things that are closed. And you can kind of have a look. Oh, okay. It was like a little, it was like a, I compare it to looking into a keyhole, right? Or looking through a keyhole and seeing into a different room. How old are you when you first encountered this book? 15? 15?

(16:16-16:39) Leadership Lessons
probably oh wow okay um so any typical 15 year old that i've ever met and i've raised a few in my own house and currently getting ready to raise another one just a mass of hormones and ideas and stuff and nonsense right to be to be gentle about it um and that's in again in an american context right

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um in a russian context i guess same kind of sort of mix how did your 15 year old self look at that versus versus how you look at it now um and the reason i ask that is because you know we i read a book there's a book that i'm a big fan of the sun also rises by ernest hemingway we covered the book on the podcast last year i think episode number 83 and um the when i read that book when i was 15

(17:06-17:35) Leadership Lessons
or 12 or 10 or eight or whatever. That book hit me totally differently in my mid 40s now. So what was the difference in reading it as a 15 year old and then re encountering it now? I don't remember how it wasn't 15. But I remember there was something in this book that made me reread it when I was about 23 or something. Okay, early 20s.

(17:37-17:47) Daria Rudnik
And then it's kind of this... I can't even tell. It's the feeling of...

(17:48-18:15) Daria Rudnik
I may be right, like opening the door and it's opens more and more and you kind of feel, you see better and how true it is what they're writing there. And some things I don't understand even now. And I probably want to reread it to understand some of the things. Why is it, why are they saying that? Like, what is, what is the meaning of that? It, it, it kind of feels natural and right, but I don't know why is it so true? So yeah, I guess it's the question of,

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why there's so many truths but i don't understand some of them and i keep searching in this book for the answers the the book almost reveals more truths the more you the more you get into it okay um what should leaders what can leaders gain from this if you're in a leadership position why should i read this book

(18:39-19:00) Daria Rudnik
I mean, I think you should read it as a human being. Most leaders are human beings, not all of them. But it's kind of the leadership in reverse. Okay. What we see is like we have Stalin who is the leader. We don't see him, but we know he's there. Mm-hmm.

(19:00-19:19) Daria Rudnik
But what truly happens is the devil as the leader comes there to reveal the truth, to show what's happening, to show the reality. And he's leading the narrative and he's leading the story in revealing more and more absurd situations.

(19:21-19:49) Daria Rudnik
And then the other reverse thing is when we have Margarita, who is actually a follower. She's following the master, but she's leading. She's saving him. She's sacrificing. So I guess it's not that we have, like, who are the leaders, those heroes who save the world, and people are following them and doing what they're told. But it can be different.

(19:50-20:19) Daria Rudnik
leadership in various ways. In your, so you do coaching and consulting, right? Yeah. And so in your coaching and consulting work, talk a little bit about that. How do you see those dynamics play out in your coaching and consulting work with clients? Well, as I mentioned, there is the idea of a great leader. And sometimes it's really good because people think, I am, as a leader, I am responsible for my team and my people.

(20:20-20:40) Daria Rudnik
which means I need to save them, which means that those leaders don't give space for those people to save themselves. So what I think this book can help is just see the bigger picture of like various types of

(20:42-21:07) Daria Rudnik
like being saved and saving. And it's not always the leader who saves everyone else. It's some of them, the follow is saving. Sometimes it's even some outsider comes and helps. So kind of not having all the weight of this responsibility, but sharing the responsibility, sharing the vision, sharing the resources with the team and doing that together.

(21:08-21:38) Leadership Lessons
It's interesting that you mentioned sharing vision and sharing resources because the chapter, and I don't think we're going to read anything from it today. Yeah, we are. Yeah, we are. We're going to read a very small piece of it. Chapter two, when you talk about the devil, when the stranger, the foreigner, describes the interaction between Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

(21:39-21:53) Leadership Lessons
which of course is from his perspective. The way in which that is constructed, Jesus is not a savior.

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Jesus is not presented as a transcendent being, both God and man, which of course comes from the Christian conception of Jesus. He's portrayed in a different kind of way. And the emphasis is placed on Pontius Pilate in that particular chapter. And we'll read a couple of excerpts from that as well on the podcast today. Many leaders have what I call a Superman complex.

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But the other side of the Superman complex is the Jesus piece of it, which is the ability or the desire sometimes to be sacrificed on a pyre for the greater good. How does Volkogog deal with that idea? How does he deal with that whole idea of being that

(22:53-23:07) Leadership Lessons
Superman, I guess, how does he how does he kind of address that? Because you mentioned Stalin, and Stalin sort of floats around in the background of all of this. But there's other dynamics that are also happening. Can you talk a little bit about those in this book?

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I mean, like I said, like Jesus is described like as a totally different. Even says like everything that's written after me is a lie. Right. Right. You talk about Matthew Levi just all of a sudden just following him for no reason. And he was like, he's portrayed as being confused as to why Matthew Levi was following him, which I thought was interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

(23:35-23:55) Daria Rudnik
But actually, he comes in the end and he happened to rule this world anyway. And the sacrifice that he made, it wasn't a sacrifice. It was just the way he lives. And that led him to this death, which is part of his...

(23:55-24:16) Daria Rudnik
life, so to say. And then he comes to the end because he's actually as a light ruling and truth ruling this world. And the world is built the right way. There's a saying, I wanted to save it, that everything will turn out right. The world is built on that.

(24:16-24:45) Leadership Lessons
Right. Yeah. So, I mean, you don't need to be Superman. The world is just right. Well, and that's... Well, that's good that you said that you don't need to be Superman because that sort of segues us into this next piece, which is... Well, which is interesting to me because the devil's pulling a trick here, right? Even in... Even in the Communist Soviet Union, the devil's pulling a trick, right?

(24:47-25:10) Leadership Lessons
And I'm fascinated by the nature of this trick, and we kind of pick it up here in The Master and Margarita. In Chapter 12, when the devil, who now has acquired a name, Woland, Mr. Woland, now is going to put on a show.

(25:11-25:31) Leadership Lessons
And so back to the book, back to the master and Margarita. We're going to read from chapter 12, Black Magic and Its Exposure. We're going to read some pieces from that. After uttering all this claptrap, Bengalski pressed his palms together and waved them in greeting to the slit of the curtain, which caused it to part with a soft rustle.

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The entrance of the magician with his long assistant and the cat who came on stage on his hind legs pleased the audience greatly. By the way, pause. The devil didn't come alone. So the devil's got an assistant who helps him wrangle a, well, not wrangle, negotiate an apartment, which I don't think we're going to cover that today, but that was really interesting to me. And then also has a cat that walks on hind legs and drinks vodka.

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Just so you know. All right. There's a lot of interesting things going on in this book. All right. So back to the book. An armchair for me, Woland ordered in a low voice. And that same second, an armchair appeared on stage. No one knew how or where in which the magician sat down.

(26:22-26:48) Leadership Lessons
Tell me, my gentle faggot, Wolin inquired of the checkered clown who evidently had another appellation other than Korovyev. What do you think the Moscow populace has changed significantly, hasn't it? The magician looked out at the hushed audience, struck by the appearance of the armchair out of nowhere. That it has, Mr. Faggot Korovyev replied in a low voice.

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You're right. The city folk have changed greatly. Externally, that is. As has the city itself, incidentally. Not to mention their clothing. These, what do you call them? Trams, automobiles have appeared. Buses, faggot prompted differentially. The audience listened attentively to this conversation, thinking it was a prelude to the magic tricks. The wings were packed with performers and stagehands, and among them, and among their faces could be seen the tense, pale face of Rimsky.

(27:17-27:36) Leadership Lessons
The physiogamy of Bengalski, who had retreated to the side of the stage, began to show some perplexity. He raised one eyebrow slightly and, taking advantage of applause, spoke. The foreign artiste is expressing his admiration for Moscow and its technological development, as well as for the Muscovites. Here, Bengalski smiled twice, first to the stalls, then to the gallery.

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Woland, faggot, and the cat turned their heads in the direction of the master's ceremonies. Did I express admiration? The magician asked the checkered faggot. By no means, Missouri, you never expressed any admiration, came the reply. Then what is the man saying? He quite simply lied, the checkered assistant declared sonorously for the whole theater to hear, and turned to Bengalski. He added, congrats, citizen, you done lied.

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spittering spatter from the gallery but bengalski gave a start and goggled his eyes of course i'm not so much interested in buses telephones and other apparatuses the checkered one prompted quite right thank you the magician spoke slowly in a heavy base as in a question of much greater importance have the city folks changed inwardly yes that is the most important question sir

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There was a shrugging and an exchanging of glances in the wings. Bengalski stood all red and Rimsky was pale. But here, as if sensing the nascent alarm, the magician said, However, we're talking away, my dear faggot, and the audience is beginning to get bored. Show us some simple little things to start off with.

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The audience stirred. Faggot and the cat walked along with footlights to opposite sides of the stage. Faggot snapped his fingers and with a rollicking three, four, snatched a deck of cards from the air, shuffled it and sent it in a long ribbon to the cat. The cat intercepted and sent it back. The satiny snake whiffled. Faggot opened his mouth like a nestling and swallowed it all card by card.

(29:07-29:29) Leadership Lessons
After which the cat bowed, scraping his right hind paw, winning himself unbelievable applause. Class, real class, rapturous shouts came from the wings. And Faggot jabbed his fingers in the stalls and announced, you'll find that same deck, esteemed citizens, on citizen Parchevsky in the seventh row, just between a three-ruble bill and a summons to court in connection with the payment of alimony to citizeness Zelkova.

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There was some stirring in the stalls, people began to get up, and finally some citizen, whose name indeed was Parchevsky, all crimson with amazement, extracted the deck from his wallet and began sticking it up in the air, not knowing what to do with it. You may keep it as a souvenir, cried Faggot, not for nothing, as you say at dinner yesterday that if it weren't for poker, your life in Moscow would be utterly unbearable.

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An old trick came from the galley. That one of the stalls is from the same company. You think so? shouted Faggot, squinting at the gallery. In that case, you're also one of us, because the deck is now in your pocket. There was a movement in the balcony, and a joyful voice said, he's right, right, he's got it. Here, here, here, wait, it's ten ruble bills.

(30:11-30:30) Leadership Lessons
Those sitting in the stalls turned their heads, and the gallery of bewildered citizen found in his pocket a bank-wrapped packet with 1,000 rubles written on it. His neighbors hovered over him, and he, in amazement, picked at the wrapper with his fingernail, trying to find out if the bills were real or some sort of magic ones. By God, they're real. Ten-ruble bills. Joyful cries came from the gallery.

(30:31-30:57) Leadership Lessons
I want to play with the same kind of deck. A fat man in the middle of the stalls requested merrily. A vengeance, please, Faggot responded. But why just you? Everyone will warmly participate. And he commanded, look up, please. One, there was a pistol in his hand. He shouted, two, the pistol was pointed up. He shouted, three, there was a flash, a bang. And all at once from under the cupola, bobbing between the trapezes, white strips of paper began falling into the theater.

(30:59-31:22) Leadership Lessons
They twirled, got blown aside, were drawn towards the gallery, bounced into the orchestra and onto the stage. In a few seconds, the rain of money, ever thickening, reached the seats and the spectators began snatching at it. Hundreds of arms were raised as spectators held the bills up to the lighted stage and saw the most true and honest-to-God watermarks. The smell also left no doubts. It was the incomparably delightful smell of freshly printed money.

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The whole theater was seized first with merriment, then with amazement. The word money, money hummed everywhere. There were gaps of ah, ah, and merry laughter. One or two were already crawling in the aisle, feeling under the chairs. Many stood on seats, trying to catch the flighty, capricious notes. Perplexity was gradually coming to the faces of the policemen.

(31:41-32:10) Leadership Lessons
And performers unceremoniously began sticking their heads out from the wings. In a dress circle, a voice was heard. What are you grabbing at? It's mine. It flew to me. Another voice. Don't shove me or you got shoved back. And suddenly there came a sound of a whack. And once a policeman's helmet appeared in the dress circle and someone from the dress circle was led away. The general agitation was increasing and no one knows where it all would have ended if faggot had not stopped the reign of money by suddenly blowing the

(32:10-32:35) Leadership Lessons
into the air. One of the major things that struck me in reading The Master and the Margarita was the use by Volgakov of magical realism.

(32:36-32:56) Leadership Lessons
in line with Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lateness of Being, a line with Chinue Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and of course, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude.

(32:56-33:23) Leadership Lessons
We write all of those books on this podcast. And there's lessons to be learned from the use of the literary technique, magical realism, because you can say things and just kind of chalk it up to magic or chalk it up to real, chalk it up, not even to realism, chalk it up to magic and kind of get away with stuff on the edges. And this is what Volkogov is doing with this very famous piece in The Master and Margarita. Yeah.

(33:25-33:52) Leadership Lessons
This chapter, Black Magic and Exposure, chapter 12, follows on a chapter, follows on several chapters that reveal Woland or Satan or the devil. I prefer to think of him as John Milton's Satan. Really, I do. That's what comes to mind. Floating through the city of Moscow, having interactions with not Stalin, but having interactions with the bureaucracy that Stalin built.

(33:54-34:17) Leadership Lessons
And sort of worming his way through that bureaucracy as a Luciferian intellect is often wont to do. But you can't tell the truth about that, right? Because Volkogov is writing in a society in the 1930s and 1940s where there are purges.

(34:17-34:46) Leadership Lessons
where there are concentration camps, I'm sorry, pardon me, not concentration camps, gulags, let's use the correct term here, where people are being put away at the writing of script as if it is a bodily function by Stalin. Literally, you got that guy up on the wrong side of the bed, you were going to the gulag, you were going to get a tenor, as the writer of the gulag archipelago noted.

(34:48-35:18) Leadership Lessons
And the only way to tell the truth about this is to exaggerate, right? It's to kind of go over the top in order to avoid the censors, in order to avoid, and it's no accident, by the way, that Bogov mentions this in the Master Margarita in that scene at the theater, in order to avoid the censors and the policemen who are always watching. An atheistic society, or at least a society built on communist atheism, may not believe in Satan, but Satan believes in you.

(35:20-35:42) Leadership Lessons
This is what I always tell my atheist friends. It doesn't really matter if you don't believe. It's going to find you. It's sort of a law of reality. So, Daria, what should we take about, and you talked about reading this in the context of

(35:43-35:54) Leadership Lessons
a human being, right? And of course, under the context of the changing narrative around Stalin, you don't know how it's being read now, but during the time when you were reading it, it was being read in a certain way.

(35:56-36:23) Leadership Lessons
let's talk a little bit, let's explore, let's pull apart the power of satire, exaggeration, myth, storytelling, because all of this is employed by Bulgogov in The Master and Margarita. So let's start with that. How does he use exaggeration? How does he use satire? And how does that strike you in his writing? To me, it feels like there's something really

(36:25-36:54) Daria Rudnik
really hurtful, like painful, because Bulgakov is really very sensitive about what's happening. And he had some relationship with Stalin and he knew like he couldn't ever publish this book, but he still couldn't hold it and couldn't keep it. And when there is something that you cannot say, you use a metaphor, exaggeration, etc. to express the feeling that you have.

(36:56-37:17) Daria Rudnik
And in organizations, we, I mean, we all have some myths, something that people tell each other about some like very old employees that been in the company for many years. Why?

(37:17-37:44) Daria Rudnik
or something that CEO likes or hates. Some stories always going on and they create this feeling and the culture of the organization. So when leaders want to, I can't say build culture, or at least somehow understand what's going on, it's very good to see what are the myths

(37:45-38:10) Daria Rudnik
What are the company myths? What are the stories people telling to each other? What stories are you telling during this onboarding meeting? What stories do you tell to each other? Maybe build some new myths. Maybe tell some new stories and kind of shaping the culture from that. Well, it's interesting. So you mentioned that you read it in one way.

(38:12-38:40) Leadership Lessons
at 15 and at 23 and then again. And then you also mentioned that there's a changing of the myths around Stalin currently occurring in Russia. I don't know that Americans are fully aware of that. I don't know that the average American who, again, doesn't pay attention to politics is really kind of focused just on their house and their life. Yeah.

(38:41-39:01) Leadership Lessons
does and going to their job and getting in their car driving back home like they're not something comes out of the sky about russia being in the ukraine and they're like where's that i don't know like i really don't know where that is and and and and you know i i say this very often to folks you know who i work with and who are you know come out of an international context

(39:02-39:31) Leadership Lessons
The thing you got to understand is America is so big. We've never had to pay attention to anything else because we got enough problems here that consume our time and our efforts. And you even saw this. I mean, my God, like we've had presidents who don't care about international affairs. Barack Obama was notorious for saying, I don't, I'm really just going to outsource all that to like other people because I really just care about what's happening here. Okay. Bill Clinton also said the same thing. Oh, okay.

(39:32-40:01) Leadership Lessons
But eventually, just like the devil showing up in an atheist country, international events always show up to you. And so you have to understand how those myths are changing in other countries, even if you don't fully understand it all the way down to the bone. You mentioned organizations. Well, a nation state like Russia, like America, like China, Israel is just an organization. It's like a company just at scale, a company with more people, right?

(40:02-40:19) Leadership Lessons
You also said that Bulgakov knew Stalin and was hurt by him. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because again, the myth around Stalin in the United States is this guy was a monster from his birth.

(40:20-40:45) Leadership Lessons
Now, we know that that's not true because no one is a monster from their birth. And I've read a significant amount about Stalin and Lenin and their relationship and where Stalin came from and sort of able to put together a psychological profile of that guy. But for the average leader who listens to this, either nationally or internationally, who doesn't really understand why that would be, why was Volkogov hurt by Stalin and then

(40:46-41:10) Leadership Lessons
how would that translate into his myth-making around that? Like, why was he hurt? Because most people probably wouldn't understand that. I'm in the situation where I'm about to break my neck, going deeply into the history. Go right on ahead. That's why we're here. Go break away, knock yourself out. Yeah.

(41:12-41:37) Daria Rudnik
The thing is, like, Bulgakov wrote a lot about the immigrants. Because those people were highly educated. Because, I mean, they were, again, they were highly educated people who wanted to say, like, to get back to the Russia that was before. I'm not going to tell that it was better. And that was, like, it was very, very hard time. Lots of people believe they're doing the good thing on both sides.

(41:39-42:08) Daria Rudnik
From both sides, there was a lot of cruelty. It's a war. It was a war. It was really, really bad. This is during the Bolshevik Revolution and the cities in this country. Yes, the revolution and the civil war. And then there was Stalin. There was a period of refreshments when, like you said, Gulag people sent for very minor things. Actually, my...

(42:09-42:35) Daria Rudnik
My grandmother's father was sent, but then luckily they were released at some point. But that happened and that touched almost every person in the country. So whenever you knew someone, you knew someone who was hurt by either war or repressions or revolution. Mm-hmm.

(42:37-43:04) Daria Rudnik
But there were things that you cannot say because they were building a new culture. They were building a new religion, I would say. I mean, they were building a new society and things that people were not allowed to say. And this conflict is very hard. It's very hard to keep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So the...

(43:07-43:32) Leadership Lessons
you said that exaggeration and myth were used to express those complicated feelings right um as a literary tool to express those complicated feelings but then it tips over and you see this in the clip that we just in the piece that we just read it tips over into this magical piece right like uh you know rubles falling from the sky right or um

(43:33-44:03) Leadership Lessons
a gentleman who's trying to get, quote unquote, the right people into an apartment building who winds up failing that negotiation and then gets busted for having American currency or foreign currency. He didn't describe specifically what country the currency came from, but foreign currency in the air shaft, right? And then he's off. He's going to the gulag. Literally, that's what I thought when I read that. I was like, well, that guy's done. That guy's not coming back.

(44:04-44:33) Leadership Lessons
Or, you know, you have the poet homeless who, and we're not going to read any of that because it's extremely complicated, but basically the poet sees his editor get decapitated and goes crazy, which is an appropriate response, by the way, to that. But then the insanity opens the door, this is the magical part, to actually seeing truth.

(44:37-44:58) Leadership Lessons
The magical parts of the master and the margarita don't get talked about nearly enough. Let me ask you a question. When you were a kid in Russia, as an adult in your history, is there a lot of magic in Russia? Is there a lot of talking about that? Or how does that get talked about? How does that get framed?

(44:59-45:14) Leadership Lessons
Because I know in a Latin American context, it gets framed in a certain way. We're very familiar with that context in America because we border Mexico. Latin America, it just is, right? And so we're very familiar with how that's framed. Chenoweth Achebe.

(45:15-45:40) Leadership Lessons
um in uh things fall apart wrote about um magic happening in an in an african tribal context um a nigerian african tribal context um the unbearable lightness of being milan kadera wrote about it happening in a czech context he tied it closer to realism than to magic but there were some magical elements in that in that book how do the magical elements play out in just sort of in in a russian context how does that happen

(45:43-46:13) Daria Rudnik
I mean, we love magic. And again, I think the people were clapping. I mean, they loved it when the rubles were falling from the sky and then they turned it to like, you know, slips of paper. But yeah, go ahead. When I was reading it as a kid, probably that was one of the things that actually attracts me because it's kind of a fairy tale. There's some magic going on. There's some Satan. And again, there's things happening and vampires and kind of this stuff. So it's pretty, it's interesting.

(46:15-46:39) Daria Rudnik
And we have like, you know, Strugatsky is also a lot about, there's a lot about magical things happening. You know, when they write about the Institute of Research of Magic. Yeah. Research in Magic Institute. And so it's pretty, I think probably it was one of the ways of describing the reality through a fairy tale of magic. Yeah.

(46:39-47:02) Leadership Lessons
right right well and and when you read russian novels in general um you do get a sense of i think the word i'm looking for is cynicism underneath um about it so you'll get a fairy tale in uh like um

(47:04-47:34) Leadership Lessons
Peter Pan, right? Or something like that, right? That's written from a very Western-centric perspective. And it seems very innocent and very... It's not weighty, right? But then you get a fairy tale written from a Russian context, and there's tragedy, there's cynicism, there's all these other dynamics that are going on.

(47:34-48:04) Leadership Lessons
And then, you know, and obviously in fairytale, you know, it's a fantasy. So I think about the most famous fairytale that I think most Americans know from Russia is Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite, right? Like that's the most famous one that sort of attained worldwide, you know, sort of thing. But it has all of the elements of a traditional Russian perspective on the world.

(48:04-48:25) Leadership Lessons
of, you know, that sort of tragedy, the sort of cynicism, you know, a touch of regret. You know, there's some anger in there. It's weighted down with some of these other things. And it is still a fairy tale. I mean, for God's sake, she got a mouse that, like, is shooting a gun, right? And, you know, that's supposed to be an allegory for...

(48:26-48:53) Leadership Lessons
i believe the crimean war if i remember correctly um that's supposed to be an allegorical sort of standard for the crimean war but but that's you wouldn't see something like that in a more western-centric sort of fairy tale um or at least we would try to split up all of those mythological themes into different into different genres right because you don't want to scare the kids too much um in in the master and margarita um

(48:56-49:20) Leadership Lessons
And Stalin lurks underneath the bureaucracy. And so I want to talk a little, I want to ask you a little bit about this. The devil interacts with the bureaucracy, but he doesn't interact with Stalin. How does that work? Like, how does, how does Stalin get to hide, be the thing that hid behind the book? But, and so the devil never really sort of goes all the way to like dealing with, with the core of,

(49:23-49:51) Leadership Lessons
from our now perspective in 2024, the core problem. Like, it doesn't happen. But he deals with the bureaucracy of, you know, the bureaucracy of getting a house, or not a house, an apartment, not even a house, an apartment. Or we're going to talk about Berlioz's place he used to hang out with all the other poets and how they had great food there, right? We might touch a little bit on that. How did...

(49:53-50:22) Leadership Lessons
Why did Volkov make that decision? Because I know that Stalin reached out to him personally. This was some of the things that I read on him. Stalin reached out to him personally and kind of gave him a job after he wrote a letter to him basically saying, I can't get a job here and you either got to lock me up or let me go. Like one of these, one of the two things. And Stalin was such a big fan, he called him, which I can imagine the sweat that must have been running down that guy's face when Stalin calls you on the phone. I can't, I mean, that's...

(50:23-50:49) Leadership Lessons
He must've like turned inside out because that could, because that could go one of two ways, right? And both of those ways are bad, you know? And so the fact that it turned into an upside for him and that he was allowed to sort of work unmolested was probably the best deal that he was ever going to get from, from Stalin. So how do you,

(50:51-51:21) Leadership Lessons
I guess the question is, how did... Why did the devil go bother Stalin? I guess that's the question. And I guess it's a question that only I would ask, but it is a question that occurs to me. Why not just have the devil go bother him? He's the problem. Just go out and bother him. Why did he do that? I guess the main reason is because the devil is not a savior.

(51:21-51:46) Daria Rudnik
And he came there for his own reasons and just revealed all the things. But the other thing is, all of this bureaucracy was done by people. Those people that Volunt was interacting with. No one forced them to sell fish of the second freshness.

(51:47-52:08) Daria Rudnik
No one forced them to write those, like, screaming, I'm busy, like, I want to go to hell. Things like that. Everything that's happening there. People just said, okay, I'll deal with this little thing. And again, I'll deal with this little thing again. And another little thing. And they're kind of selling their souls step by step.

(52:09-52:38) Leadership Lessons
accepting this bureaucracy and the way this world works. So that's why it's not so much Stalin, it's the people who did that. I want to revisit that idea. I love how you framed that, selling their souls step by step, because this is something else that concerns me deeply, is that it's not the... In general, the idea is that

(52:39-53:07) Leadership Lessons
you commit a big crime or a big sin or a big mistake, right? But in general, that's not how it happens, actually. And I think many people everywhere, this is a human condition thing, don't, they are unable to track the steps that take them down into health.

(53:10-53:40) Leadership Lessons
And then once they're down there, they're unable to find the steps to step out. And that's part of what you see in the master and Margarita. And I think you're onto something there. And I think that leaders have to have, and we'll talk a little bit about this a little bit later, but the leaders have to have the moral clarity to say that's a step to hell. Don't do that. Now, if people go and do it,

(53:41-53:51) Leadership Lessons
that's on them. But you rang the bell, you said the warning. And I think that

(53:52-54:18) Leadership Lessons
escalation in our society today, our societies today that happen, whether, no matter what country you're in, no matter what the internal things may be, may be, may be happening or external things, there's always a choice. There's always a choice to escalate. There's always a choice to, to either further step into degradation or to step out. And I don't think people give themselves enough credit for the agency to choose to not do that.

(54:22-54:49) Leadership Lessons
Back to the book. Back to The Master and Margarita. So we are reading a version of this. I always say this at least once on the podcast. We are reading a version of this. I'm not going to tell you which version, but I want you to go out and pick it up. There are several really good versions. Probably the best one is going to be a version in Russian if you can get it and if you can read it.

(54:49-55:13) Leadership Lessons
uh good on you i unfortunately cannot read russian uh the Cyrillic alphabet looks to me like a bunch of scribble and that's because of the problem with me not with the alphabet look into hebrew and then you're right exactly there you go that's right uh so i have enough trouble in english i try to stick to the things that i know um

(55:13-55:42) Leadership Lessons
But as we pointed out, the translation that I have, which again, I'm not going to tell you which one it is for copyright purposes, but the translation that I have is really, really, really, really good. And you can go search for it on Amazon or Thrift Books or Barnes & Noble. I would recommend going out and getting it. And by the way, it is a hefty book. It is around 400 pages, but it moves fairly quickly because Volgakov is not writing...

(55:45-56:02) Leadership Lessons
He's not Dostoyevsky, right? He's not doing that thing. He's also not Tolstoy. He's not making it romantic, right? He can move a little bit quicker. And so unlike many Russian novels that you may have been exposed to as a listener,

(56:03-56:30) Leadership Lessons
or that we've read on this podcast, it tips a little bit more towards maybe something like Solzhenitsyn or Chekhov versus Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, right? And actually, it's probably more in line with Chekhov than anything else in the speed with which you can kind of move through this book. So back to the book. So we're going to pick this up. We're actually going to go backwards a little bit. So we were on chapter 12.

(56:30-56:57) Leadership Lessons
Actually going to go back to, we're going to go back to chapter two. And we're going to meet a gentleman that some of you may know from the Bible. The guy, Bulgakov, I think thought kind of got a bad rap. And maybe this is his stand-in for Stalin. We're going to meet a gentleman named Pontius Pilate.

(56:59-57:27) Leadership Lessons
And I quote, so, so, Pilate said, smiling. Now I have no doubts that the idle loafers of Yershalem followed at your heels. I don't know who hung such a tongue on you, but he hung it well. Incidentally, tell me, is it true that you entered Yershalem by the Susa gate, riding on an ass, accompanied by a crowd of riffraff who shouted greetings to you as some kind of prophet? Here the procurator pointed to the parchment scroll. The prisoner glanced at the procurator in perplexity.

(57:28-57:55) Leadership Lessons
I don't even have an ass, hegemon, he said. I did enter Jerusalem by the Susa Gate, but on foot, accompanied only by Matthew Levi, and no one shouted anything to me because no one in Jerusalem knew me then. Do you happen to know, Pilate continued without taking his eyes off the prisoner, such men as a certain Dismasus, another named Gestas and a third named Bar Rabin? I do not know these good people, the prisoner replied. Truly? Truly. Truly.

(57:56-58:25) Leadership Lessons
And now tell me, why is it that you use the words good people all the time? Do you call everyone that or what? Everyone, the prisoner replied. There are no evil people in the world. The first I hear of it, Pilate said, grinning. But perhaps I know too little of life. You needn't record anymore, he addressed the secretary, who had not recorded anything anyway and went on talking with the prisoner. You read that in some Greek book? No, I figured it out for myself. And you preach it? Yes. Yes.

(58:26-58:41) Leadership Lessons
But take, for instance, the centurion Mark, the one known as Ratslayer. Is he good? Yes, replied the prisoner. True. He's an unhappy man. Since the good people disfigured him, he has become cruel and hard. I'd be curious to know who maimed him.

(58:41-59:10) Leadership Lessons
I can willingly tell you that, pilot responded, for I was witness to it. The good people fell on him like dogs on a bear. There were Germani fastened on his neck, his arms, his legs. The infantry maniple was encircled, and if one flank hadn't been cut by a cavalry term, of which I was the commander, you, philosopher, would not have had the chance to speak with the rat slayer. That was at the Battle of Edestavisio, in the Valley of the Virgins. If I could speak with him, the prisoners suddenly said musingly. I'm sure he changed sharply.

(59:11-59:25) Leadership Lessons
I don't suppose, Pilot responded, that you'd bring much joy to the legate of the Legion if you decide to talk with any of his officers or soldiers. Anyhow, it's also not going to happen, fortunately for everyone, and I will be the first to see to it.

(59:26-59:42) Leadership Lessons
At that moment, a swallow swiftly flitted into the colonnade, described a circle under the golden ceiling, swooping down, almost brushed the face of a bronze statue in a niche with its pointed wing and disappeared behind the capital of a column. It may be that it thought of nesting there.

(59:44-1:00:12) Leadership Lessons
And they were going to move forward a little bit. Listen, Hanorzi, the procurator spoke, looking at Yeshua. Somehow, strangely, the procurator's face was menacing, but his eyes were alarmed. Did you ever say anything about the great Caesar? Answer, did you? Yes or no? Pilate drew the word no out someone longer than is done in court, and his glance sent Yeshua some thought as if he wished to instill in the prisoner. To speak the truth is easy and pleasant, the prisoner observed.

(1:00:13-1:00:39) Leadership Lessons
I have no need to know, Pilate responded in a stifled angry voice, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant for you to speak the truth. You will have to speak it anyway. But as you speak, weigh every word unless you want not only inevitable but also painful death. No one knew what had happened with the procurator of Judea, but he allowed himself to raise his hand as if to protect himself from a ray of sunlight and from behind his hand as from behind a shield to send the prisoner some sort of prompting look.

(1:00:40-1:01:05) Leadership Lessons
Answered that he went on speaking. Do you know a certain Judas from Kiriath? And what precisely did you say to him about Caesar if you said anything? It was like this. The prisoner began talking eagerly the evening before last through the temple. I made the acquaintance of a young man who called himself Judas from the town of Kiriath. He invited me to his place in the lower city and treated me to a good man. Pilate asked and a devilish fire flashed in his eyes.

(1:01:06-1:01:33) Leadership Lessons
A very good man and an inquisitive one, the prisoner confirmed. He showed the greatest interest in my thoughts and received me very cordially. Light the lamps. Pilate spoke through his teeth in the same tone as the prisoner and his eyes glinted. Yes, Yeshua went on, slightly surprised that the procurator was so well informed and asked me to give my view of state power. He was extremely interested in this question. And what did you say, asked Pilate, or are you going to reply that you've forgotten what you said?

(1:01:33-1:02:03) Leadership Lessons
but there was already a hopelessness in Pilate's tone. Among other things, the prisoner recounted, I said that all power is violence over people, and that a time will come when there will be no power of the Caesars nor any other power. Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where generally there will be no need for any power at all. Go on. I didn't go on, said the prisoner. Here men ran in, bound me, and took me away to prison. The secretary, trying not to let it drop a single word, rapidly traced the words on his parchment.

(1:02:04-1:02:27) Leadership Lessons
There never has been, is not, and never will be any power in this world greater or better for people than the power of the Emperor Tiberius. Pilots cracked, a sixth voice swelled. For some reason, the procurator looked at the secretary and the convoy with hatred. And it is not for you and saying criminal to reason about it. Here, Pilots shouted, convoy off the balcony. And he turning to the secretary, he added, leave me alone with this criminal. This is a state matter.

(1:02:28-1:02:53) Leadership Lessons
Convoy raised their spears and with a measured tramp of hobnailed caligae, walked off the balcony into the garden, and the secretary followed the convoy. For some time, the silence on the balcony was broken only by the water singing in the fountain. Pilots saw how the watery dish blew up over the spout, how its edges broke off, how it fell down in streams. The prisoner was first to speak. I see that some misfortune has come about because I talked with that young man from Curioth,

(1:02:54-1:03:15) Leadership Lessons
I have a foreboding hegemon that he will come to grief, and I'm very sorry for him. I think, the procurator replied, grinning strangely, that there is now someone else in the world for whom you ought to feel sorrier than for Judas of Curioth, and who is going to have it much worse than Judas. So then, Mark Ratslayer, a cold and convinced torturer, the people who, as I see...

(1:03:16-1:03:41) Leadership Lessons
The procurator pointed to Yeshua's disfigured face, beat you for your preaching. The robbers Dismas and Gestas, who with their confreres killed four soldiers, and finally the dirty traitor Judas, all are good people? Yes, said the prisoner. And the kingdom of truth will come? It will, Hegemon, Yeshua answered with conviction. It will never come, Pilate suddenly cried out in such a terrible voice that Yeshua drew back.

(1:03:42-1:04:10) Leadership Lessons
Thus, many years before in the Valley of the Virgins, Pilate had cried to his horsemen with the words, cut them down, cut them down. The giant rat slayer is trapped. He raised his voice, cracked with commanding still more and called out so that his words could be heard in the garden. Criminal, criminal, criminal. And then lowering his voice, he asked Yeshua HaNorzi, do you believe in any gods? God is one, replied Yeshua. I believe in him.

(1:04:22-1:04:45) Leadership Lessons
Chapter two of The Master and Margarita covers Yeshua, or Jesus's, meeting with Pontius Pilate as told by Mr. Woland to a mouth-agape atheist editor and a poet who's about to go mad on a park bench in the middle of Moscow.

(1:04:46-1:05:15) Leadership Lessons
Matter of fact, the story was told by Mr. Woland, or the devil, so well that Homeless, the poet, believed he was there, witnessing it himself. We already talked a little bit about exaggeration and satire and truth. This, however, this section I picked to read, because this is more about the tension between myth and the truth

(1:05:16-1:05:44) Leadership Lessons
So there's an idea in a movie that I'm a big fan of. And it may be a movie that Daria may have seen or you may not have seen. I don't know how familiar you are with cinema. But there's a movie from back in the 60s called The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It's a Western starring John Wayne. And it was directed by a guy named John Ford, written by James Warner Bella and Willis Goldbeck. And there's a line in it.

(1:05:46-1:06:13) Leadership Lessons
that Jimmy Stewart, Jimmy Stewart doesn't say it, but basically the plot of the movie is that Jimmy Stewart was a young idealistic lawyer who went West and was going to tame the West with law. And John, not John Stewart, sorry, John Wayne, not John Stewart. John Wayne was a gunslinger and Lee Marvin was the villain.

(1:06:14-1:06:38) Leadership Lessons
And Lee Marvin, as the villain, didn't care about the law. A law book wasn't going to be the thing that was going to stop him. Matter of fact, he spat on the law book. Matter of fact, he burned the law books. He thought the law books were nonsense. There was only one thing that was going to stop a guy like that. And that was a bullet. And eventually, Jimmy Stewart...

(1:06:39-1:07:06) Leadership Lessons
who was the man of the law, had to come to the realization that the law wasn't the only thing that was always going to work if you wanted to get justice. And he brought himself finally, and this is a movie, again, it's well over 50 years old, so you can go get this. And it does relate to The Master and Margarita in several different ways, but he, Jimmy Stewart in the movie, decides that he's going to shoot Lee Marvin. And he gets up the courage to go do it,

(1:07:07-1:07:31) Leadership Lessons
And he does indeed fire the gun in the Old West. But it's not him that ends up shooting the villain. It's the guy who he dismissed, John Wayne, who winds up shooting the villain. But everybody thinks that it's Jimmy Stewart. That was the myth. Everybody thought that Jimmy Stewart was the hero.

(1:07:31-1:08:00) Leadership Lessons
As a matter of fact, he was able to take that and he was able to become a congressman from the territory and a governor and all these other kinds of things to be able to acquire political power from this myth. And you know what happened with the John Wayne character? Precisely nothing. He was forgotten. And a journalist many years later is interviewing Jimmy Stewart in the movie. And Jimmy Stewart tells him the truth when he's a very old man. And you know what the...

(1:08:01-1:08:24) Leadership Lessons
the media guy says the newspaper man when he's pressed by his young innocent naive protege to print the truth he says and i quote when there's a myth and the truth you print the myth and that's where the movie stops

(1:08:31-1:08:56) Leadership Lessons
I don't know how the man who shot Liberty Valance would have played in Russia, but I think, well, I think all y'all would have laughed at it, but I think you would have gotten it. Because just like in The Master and Margarita, the tension between the myth and the truth and the printing of the myth to make the myth become truth is the thing that Bogogov is exploring here.

(1:08:59-1:09:20) Leadership Lessons
Pontius Pilate asks Jesus, this is recorded in the Bible, I believe it's in the book of Luke, if I remember correctly, although it might be in Mark. Pilate asks Jesus, what is truth? Which is a truly excellent question.

(1:09:20-1:09:49) Leadership Lessons
That could only be asked by somebody who's so totally, completely blind as a bureaucrat to the very thing that's standing in front of him. Pontius Pilate, by the way, portrayed correctly in The Master of the Margarita, was a bureaucrat. He served another power. And he was so blind to the truth that he could not see it when it was standing right in front of him. Bulgagov plays with this because he knows that that's a truly excellent question.

(1:09:52-1:10:13) Leadership Lessons
And I think that's his critique of Stalin. I think Stalin was Pontius Pilate, but he couldn't call him that, obviously. So he just built the entire myth around him. So here's a question for you, Daria. Um...

(1:10:16-1:10:36) Leadership Lessons
How can leaders have the moral character to say the truth and not print the myth? And by the way, this book was written during a time when the number one newspaper in Russia, or, well, not the number one, I'm sorry, the only newspaper in Russia, was Pravda, a word that ironically means truth.

(1:10:37-1:11:02) Leadership Lessons
That thing wasn't worth, at least from what I hear, I never saw an actual version of Pravda, but from what I hear, that thing wasn't worth lying in a birdcage with. How do leaders deal with this? How do you deal with this dynamic? Because this happens in organizations too. Memos get printed that are full of lies, and everybody knows what the truth is, but no one has the moral character to say it.

(1:11:06-1:11:36) Daria Rudnik
I have a quote. Yeah, go ahead. I loaded you up there. I gave you a lot. And it kind of goes there, I think, twice. That cowardice is undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices. And it is the most terrible vice. So leaders need to find their courage and seek for the truth and tell the truth.

(1:11:39-1:12:01) Daria Rudnik
How do you do that if you're surrounded by people who would rather lie and get away with it? I mean, in terms of organizational perspective, if you're on top, you're actually creating those beef, you're creating the stories, you're telling the truth, you're leading. If you are in the middle, I mean, and you cannot change anything, I mean, just leave.

(1:12:02-1:12:29) Daria Rudnik
like Master Magritte, they leave and homeless. He left this literature organization, finally, because you cannot change something that doesn't want to change. You don't have to save them. Your job is to be truthful. But, Daria, you don't understand. I have kids. I have a wife. I have bills.

(1:12:29-1:12:59) Leadership Lessons
I have a car payment. I have a mistress I haven't told my wife about. I have a boat. I've got all these expenses. I've got all these expenses, Daria. You don't understand. Yeah, and second freshness comes after that. Okay. Well, there's, you know, courage has always been in short supply, though.

(1:13:01-1:13:25) Leadership Lessons
always um genius is everywhere everybody's brilliant but the number of people who are actually courageous very tiny no everybody's courageous you think so you have i mean when you go for a date it's so scary

(1:13:26-1:13:54) Daria Rudnik
It's been a long time since I went for a date, so I don't know what that means. But okay, go ahead. I mean, yeah. When you find a new job, when you start a new job, it's scary. When you learn a new skill, it's always scary. I mean, we all do things that are scary. And we still do that because we feel it's important and we want to do that. And yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm in 1920s, 1930s Russia. How can I be courageous in that environment?

(1:13:56-1:14:26) Daria Rudnik
You're not. Why not? Why not? Why am I not a coward there? There are different ways of people being courageous there. Okay. What are the different ways of being courageous? Just living the life that is right for them. Talking. I mean, there's kitchen conversations. Kitchen is a sacred place. It was a sacred place. It still is. When people get together and talk, like really talk.

(1:14:26-1:14:53) Daria Rudnik
They were self-publishing books. All those books that are banned, they were self-published, handed to different people. And it was like huge, like self-publishing is huge. People printing them out. So there are ways of doing that without hurting your family and your life. But again, we are not in Russia in 20s, 30s. We're in a much better world.

(1:14:54-1:15:21) Leadership Lessons
Well, at least like Russia, Israel, US. And we are in a much better world. We can be courageous. We have a space for that. Well, I think, I don't know how much you know about this in the United States, but there are people who would, who are some of my listeners to this podcast. And this podcast does exist in a particular cultural context as well. And the cultural context of the last, I would say the last 10 years in America,

(1:15:23-1:15:51) Leadership Lessons
has been a culture particularly in politically progressive elite circles where there's a lot of policing of the right thing to say. And if you don't say the right thing, if you break, you do lose your career. That's where this idea of cancel culture that you may have heard of comes from, right? And while it's not compared to anything,

(1:15:52-1:16:22) Leadership Lessons
that had occurred in russia in the 20th century there are people who are significantly concerned that it could lead remember those tiny steps that it could lead in tiny steps down into that hell and by the way there's some statistics to back some of this up i mean 30 of the people in america who are between the ages of 18 and 26 are kind of on the fence about free speech

(1:16:24-1:16:48) Leadership Lessons
That's ridiculous. By the way, I'm not part of that generation. I'm two generations older. I'm not on the fence about free speech. You need free speech. And I don't really, to your point, it doesn't really matter if it hurts your feelings. I'm not really concerned about that. Because if it's true and it hurts your feelings, then that means your feelings are incorrect. And your feelings need to change, not the thing that is true.

(1:16:49-1:17:07) Leadership Lessons
But that's very hard for people who are getting ready to inherit the West or inherit America, such as it is. That's very hard for them to wrap their arms around. And so there's a lot of policing of speech that has gone on in the last 10 years. And so you say that.

(1:17:08-1:17:34) Leadership Lessons
And don't get me wrong, there are still people who are publishing, and there are people who are pushing back, and there's all these kinds of things that are happening. But the cultural sense you get in America, anyway, is that something fragile is being threatened. And that if you don't rush to defend it, then it'll go away. And I do think that's true to a degree. Yeah.

(1:17:36-1:18:01) Leadership Lessons
In an organization, let's make this very tiny. In an organization, if I'm in the middle of the organization and I can't change it, how do I make a plan to leave? How do I do that? Should I have a kitchen conversation with my spouse or partner? Should I start with that? Again, maybe it's my cultural context, but I...

(1:18:02-1:18:31) Daria Rudnik
like Chekhov and Bulgakov, they write about the small people, like very unimportant people who are making unimportant choices. So it's, for me, it's not about making a big change, but it's about making the small choices that are right, that are doing for the better. In organizational context, I've seen many good people, leaders,

(1:18:33-1:19:00) Daria Rudnik
who are acting as shields for their people and creating safe environment for their people, protecting them from senior toxic leaders. So that's one of the ways to do that. I liked how you framed that of making small choices, right? Because I think sometimes we get caught up in the scale of a thing.

(1:19:01-1:19:26) Leadership Lessons
You know, it's kind of like the comparison I make is when people decide if they're going to, whether or not they're going to donate to a non-profit organization, right? You know, and in general, the smaller than more innocuous the donation, the ask you can make of the other party, the more likely they are to give it to you, right? Right.

(1:19:28-1:19:55) Leadership Lessons
But if you do that enough with enough people, then all of a sudden you have this mass of cash, right? And the bigger the ask that you ask of folks, the more likely you are to hit resistance, internal psychological resistance to that ask. And I think the same as what happens with nonprofits, the same psychology operates in what you're talking about.

(1:20:00-1:20:25) Leadership Lessons
Something occurs to me that I should ask you and your experience as a coach and as a leadership consultant in the similar space that I'm in. And I want to see if you've seen some of the same things that I've seen. I think we both probably had different experiences, but we both have probably come to similar conclusions. So COVID changed people's perspective on all of this stuff.

(1:20:27-1:20:49) Leadership Lessons
Because it gave people, I think, the average person in the middle of the organization, it gave them permission to say no. It was the big, we talked earlier about seeing through the keyhole. COVID was the keyhole through the door where they could see the other side. And in America, a lot of people quit their jobs.

(1:20:51-1:21:14) Leadership Lessons
A lot of people packed up their families and moved around. I'm one of those people. Several other people I know personally and just, you know, not an impersonally, just look at statistics. People moved around, not only change, change jobs and change careers, but also are now pushing, putting pressure on organizations to change culture because, you

(1:21:16-1:21:46) Leadership Lessons
quite frankly, the toothpaste of working in an office is out of the tube. And I don't think the CEOs and the toxic leaders, to your point, the ones who want everything to go, I don't think they're losing the argument. They're in the process of losing the argument in the other direction. But did you see that with COVID? What did you see with folks with COVID? In your opinion, did COVID give people permission to do that thing, to have that courage?

(1:21:48-1:22:07) Daria Rudnik
From what I see, COVID gave people a feeling of another life. Okay. I can live a better life when I'm not fixed to the office. I'm not sitting there all week and without opportunity to do anything else. So they kind of gave this.

(1:22:09-1:22:28) Daria Rudnik
On the other side, there is a big part of being isolated and lonely, but still people don't want to sacrifice that. They don't want to, okay, I'd better be lonely and overloaded my family stuff rather than going every day to the office doing sometimes meaningless work. Mm-hmm.

(1:22:30-1:22:45) Daria Rudnik
We'll see how, I mean, I kind of saw this trend, like you're saying, but then those were big layoffs. And again, people are holding for their jobs because there's not enough job for everyone. Good job. So we'll see how, but eventually...

(1:22:45-1:23:13) Daria Rudnik
I think once they had this feeling of freedom, it was really, really hard to get them back to where they were. And people changed. The organizations changed. Lots of organizations, even before COVID, they had this idea of self-management, of working towards the vision, of sharing their power with employees. That was before COVID. COVID just showed to the majority, oh, you can have... Not the majority, okay. Many other...

(1:23:13-1:23:39) Leadership Lessons
what's mostly in tech show them how that they can live different lives so it'll change yeah i think it poured accelerant over things that were already occurring right it poured gasoline on the fire in essence um i also think that it poured gasoline on people's courage um you know because if your choice is between

(1:23:41-1:24:03) Leadership Lessons
And I'm talking about, you know, in the middle of 2020 and, you know, that sort of environment, you know, between March and August. No, March and November of 2020. Like, I think the choices became really real for people in the industrialized West in ways that it hasn't been really real for a long, long time.

(1:24:05-1:24:27) Leadership Lessons
long time longer than i've been alive um and i'm in my mid-40s i don't i can't think of any time in my own history in the last 40 years when there's been that much of a crisis point in western industrialized democracies

(1:24:28-1:24:58) Leadership Lessons
And I know I'm leaving out 95% of the rest of the world. I understand that. I have listeners all over the world. I'm not saying any of you didn't have a similar experience. I'm just saying from where we sit, from the continent we're on, it was a game changer in a lot of different ways. And I do think it gave people permission to have courage. And I think that's what they needed. I agree there were some things that were already pushed towards that, but it kind of

(1:24:58-1:25:23) Leadership Lessons
it kind of really it lit everybody on fire right and i don't know i don't know that was a uh i don't know that that was a bad thing i don't know that that was a bad thing all right well back to the book back to the master and margarita we're rounding the corner here um so we're we're going to we're going to end speaking of uh

(1:25:26-1:25:56) Leadership Lessons
Speaking of the organization that homeless quit or was maybe shoved out the door of. We're going to talk about the doings at Gribadevs. Am I pronouncing that correctly? I'm probably not. Gribadevs. Gribadevs. Gribadevs. Gribadevs. I can't get it. I can't get that Y sound. Your mouth has to do an interesting thing with the Y sound, and I can't make my mouth do that. I'm going to try. Gribadevs.

(1:25:58-1:26:20) Leadership Lessons
Okay. All right. I'm just going to Americanize it. I'm sorry. I'd rather Americanize it than butcher it. Okay. Because I don't want to disrespect anybody. So pardon me. So there were doings at Grimmadown. There were doings at there. And so we're going to read from chapter five. We're going to read a little bit of a section from chapter five as we round the corner here on The Master and Margarita.

(1:26:22-1:26:45) Leadership Lessons
Masolit had settled himself at Gribedev's in the best and coziest way imaginable. Anyone entering Gribedev's first of all became involuntarily acquainted with the announcements of various sports clubs and with group as well as individual photographs of the members of Masolit hanging the photographs on the walls of the staircase leading to the second floor.

(1:26:46-1:27:01) Leadership Lessons
On the door to the very first room of this upper floor, one could see a big sign, fishing and vacation section, along with a picture of a carp caught on the line. On the door of room number two, something not quite comprehensible was written. One day creative trips. Apply to M.V. Sperinoznaya.

(1:27:02-1:27:24) Leadership Lessons
The next day, the next door bore a brief but now totally incomprehensible inscription, Perelgino, after which the chance visitor to Gurebidyev's would not know where to look up from the motley inscriptions on the aunt's walnut doors. Sign up for paper with Polkia Vingemna, cashier, personal accounts of sketch writers.

(1:27:24-1:27:42) Leadership Lessons
If one cut through the longest line, which started downstairs at the doorman's lodge, one could see the sign housing question on a door which people were crashing every second. Beyond the housing question there opened out a luxurious poster on which a cliff was depicted and riding on its crest a horseman in a felt cloak with a rifle on his shoulder.

(1:27:42-1:27:54) Leadership Lessons
A little lower, palm trees and a balcony. On the balcony, a seized young man with a forelock, gazing somewhere aloft with very lively eyes, holding a fountain pen in his hand. By the way, pause. I was...

(1:27:56-1:28:21) Leadership Lessons
I was an art major in college, a bachelor of fine arts major. And we did a lot of study of Soviet realism, a lot of study in Soviet realism. And so the image that I have of the posters in my brain is a Soviet realistic art from like the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s, where it's all very heroic and looking off to the glorious revolutionary future or whatever. Yeah.

(1:28:22-1:28:45) Leadership Lessons
The inscription, full-scale creative vacations from two weeks story novella to one year novel trilogy. Yalta, Suksu, Borovov, Sikhezizri, and I'm going to skip over that one because I can't hit that one, Leningrad Winter Palace. Okay, please forgive me. There was also a line at the door, but not an excessive one, some 150 people.

(1:28:46-1:29:04) Leadership Lessons
Next, obedient to the whimsical curves, ascents and descents of the derivative house, came the Masolet Executive Board, cashiers numbers 2345, editorial board, chairman of Masolet, billiard room, various auxiliary institutions, and finally, that same hall with the colonnade where the aunt had delighted in the comedy of her genius nephew.

(1:29:04-1:29:34) Leadership Lessons
Any visitor finding himself in Kribadevs, unless, of course, he was a total dimwit, would realize that once would a good life those lucky fellows the Masalit members were having, and black envy would immediately start gnawing at him. And he would immediately address bitter reproaches to heaven for not having endowed him at birth with literary talent, lacking which there was naturally no dreaming of owning a Masalit membership card, brown, smelling of costly leather with a gold wide border, a card known to all Moscow.

(1:29:36-1:29:54) Leadership Lessons
Who will speak in defense of envy? This feeling belongs to the nasty category, but all the same one must put oneself in the visitor's position, where what he had seen on the upper floor was not all and was far from all. The entire ground floor of the aunt's house was occupied by a restaurant, and what a restaurant! It was justly considered the best in Moscow.

(1:29:54-1:30:17) Leadership Lessons
And not only because it took up two vast halls with arched ceilings painted with violet Assyrian-maned horses, not only because on each table there stood a lamp shaded with a shawl, not only because it was not accessible to just anybody coming in off the street, but because in the quality of its fare, derivatives beat any restaurant in Moscow up and down. And this fare was available at the most reasonable, but by no means onerous, price.

(1:30:26-1:30:55) Leadership Lessons
Who will speak in defense of envy? This is something I specifically wanted to ask you about. It's actually not on my notes. This is something I wanted to specifically ask you about. So I remember as a kid sitting on the floor. I was born in 1979. So I'm old enough to have this memory. I was born at a time when I'm old enough to have this memory. I remember seeing images on television

(1:30:56-1:31:19) Leadership Lessons
of Russian stores pre the collapse of the Berlin wall, just empty of any items at all whatsoever. And I remember thinking as a seven, eight year old kid, man, that sucks. It was like, I go to the grocery store all the time and there's like cereal everywhere. Yeah.

(1:31:19-1:31:30) Leadership Lessons
And I'm seven. I don't know. I know nothing about market economies. I know nothing about planned economies. I just know anytime I want to go to the store, there's 30,000 different types of cereal that I can get.

(1:31:33-1:31:57) Leadership Lessons
Fast forward many years, and I've had interactions with people who have gone to grocery stores in other countries, and they have confirmed that we do have a massive number in America, in our grocery stores, of choices, right, that don't exist other places. I know people who have been to India. I know people who have been to...

(1:31:57-1:32:14) Leadership Lessons
uh uh brazil i know people who have been um i know who had the same similar experience in sub-saharan africa and it's not that those places don't know what a grocery store is please give me a break it's just the level of um

(1:32:17-1:32:40) Leadership Lessons
prosperity that that shows right that that demonstrates okay so i'm reading this this piece in the master and margarita and i'm trying to transport my brain back to 1920s 1930s russia and i'm trying to think about how an average kulak or more peasant from the country

(1:32:41-1:33:01) Leadership Lessons
would see this? Like, what was the sort of cultural context for this description that Bulgagov gives? And I think he's writing it from that perspective, because when he writes that sentence, who will speak in defense of envy? That's really powerful. And no American writer would ever write that. Like, that's not even a

(1:33:06-1:33:35) Leadership Lessons
Other folks who come from other cultures would say that that's because we're all young and innocent and naive here. No, we've been on this continent for 400 years, kids. We're not young and innocent and naive. We just like to come off that way. That's what we like to put forth. We know what the deal is. We know what envy is. But no American writer would ever write that. Or at least not write it so directly, right? What was there to be envious about, Daria?

(1:33:37-1:34:03) Leadership Lessons
Why would I be envious if I'm an average peasant, like a Chekhov peasant, walking into Masalitz in the 1930s? Why would I be envious? Instead of what they have there, I would have my boiled potatoes in my kitchen. Okay, boiled potatoes with some hot dogs. I mean, made mostly of paper, but...

(1:34:06-1:34:31) Leadership Lessons
this kind of thing yeah envy like that seeps into the culture right so is there still a strain of that now almost 100 years on in russian culture and i'm gonna ask you to comment on the whole culture just just obviously what your experiences are right yeah i mean

(1:34:31-1:34:59) Daria Rudnik
It's a lot of envy. Again, it's so natural to me. I mean, yes, there is envy because there were poor people, there were oligarchs and all those politicians who have lots of money and people who don't have lots of money. But now it's different because you kind of can make your own way up or at least to some decent level. You can. I mean, obviously you can. Right. But back then,

(1:35:01-1:35:24) Daria Rudnik
You need to be within the certain circles to have access to certain goods. And if you're not there, you have no access. So, I mean, you cannot change the situation drastically unless you have literature talent or any other talent that is needed at the time.

(1:35:25-1:35:52) Leadership Lessons
So that's the other piece in here. So Bogogov is clearly writing about something that he's personally experienced, right? Talk a little bit about what talent did for you or what talent does for you in that context. Because again, you know, yeah, I mean, there are people in my life and people in, you know, things that I like, certain aspects of culture that are talented.

(1:35:53-1:36:22) Leadership Lessons
the easiest example in America is sports. You know, there are sports athletes that are talented at what they do for sure. Like I can't run a four 40, like a 22 year old who's playing for an American football team. Like I can, I'm not going to do that. Right. And thus they're not going to pay me, you know, a million dollars a year to run a little ball around. Like nobody's going to do that. I don't have that kind of talent. Okay. That's fine. Even when I was younger, I didn't have that kind of talent.

(1:36:23-1:36:48) Leadership Lessons
And there's very, very few people I knew who did. That's why there's only, in the American football system, there's only 32 teams. There's only 32. There's not 1,000. There's just 32. Okay. But then you go over to something like literature, right? And almost everybody these days, you talked about self-publishing back in the day, almost anybody these days can publish if you want to.

(1:36:49-1:37:15) Leadership Lessons
I've self-published three books, getting ready to self-publish a fourth. Anybody can publish if you just want it badly enough. And so this idea of literary talent has sort of not waned, but it's become more difficult to be a literary talent. What was the power of that back in the day? Because Volkogov was still...

(1:37:17-1:37:35) Leadership Lessons
he was still trying to operate right inside of that space. The Master and Margarita, you know, actually as a manuscript, the story of the book itself was very interesting. I believe that, you know, a copy of it got damaged or got burned somehow. And then his widow held onto it, you know, until the 1960s when she thought,

(1:37:35-1:37:58) Leadership Lessons
under was it under brezhnev i think um that yeah that she could actually you know publish it and then brezhnev was like it's a cool book you got there be a shame anything happened to it um and then it sort of went back underground for for a long time um and then it sort of popped up again when um when perestroika and on all that began happening in the mid in the mid 80s under um

(1:37:59-1:38:27) Leadership Lessons
Gorbachev couldn't think of his name for just a second had his head pop up his face pop up in my brain but yeah Gorbachev um and then finally you know it sort of started sort of started its internet its rise towards international more international acclaim um literary talent though I don't know it's interesting like Russian culture seems to value literary talent in a way that American culture does not why is that let's start with that why is that why does Russian culture value writers

(1:38:29-1:38:57) Leadership Lessons
They're almost like rock stars, which is insane to me here, because nobody's looking... I mean, there are a few, like Tom Wolfe back in the day, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, but I can't think of a rock star literary person in the last 20 years in America. Well, it depends, like...

(1:38:58-1:39:17) Daria Rudnik
We didn't have rock stars there. Okay. All right. Maybe. Okay. I shouldn't start. You're right. I'm wrong. Correct me. No, you're right. You're right. I shouldn't. I mean, we didn't. So, but I guess what is that? There should be like some people who are telling something valuable. Right.

(1:39:18-1:39:43) Daria Rudnik
I need to make it for the self-publishing books. They're not people who write in the books. They're actually taking Bulgakov books, type it in the typing machine, make it in the form of the book, and give it to their friends to read. That's still self-publishing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's not that they were writing something. It's the way of distribution of this banned literature. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah.

(1:39:44-1:40:09) Daria Rudnik
by the way who was on that banned literature list who else was on that list other than book of golf well it's at some point yeah i don't i don't i mean i don't know i guess there were lots and they were coming and going because of the the policy was changing so they were kind of coming i'm so i'm not i'm not sure okay okay um

(1:40:12-1:40:29) Leadership Lessons
I don't know. It seems as though historically, maybe I'll frame it in a historical context. It seems as though in history, like. Tolstoy wasn't broke. Like when he when he sat down to the train station was like, I'm just done. He wasn't broke.

(1:40:29-1:40:55) Leadership Lessons
He just decided he was done. And he was going to be Tolstoy. He already knew he was going to be Tolstoy. Dostoevsky was a little bit shakier. But again, he was not... It's not, in general, a happy man about much of anything. You just have to read notes from the underground for that. But...

(1:40:55-1:41:19) Leadership Lessons
But like Chekhov, right? Like Chekhov wrote short stories while he was being, you know, while he was serving as a medical doctor, which Bogokov also served as a medical doctor. So there's this strain in Russian literature that sort of elevates, elevates writers in a way that it doesn't, that the American literature or the American culture really, at least not in the last 20 years, the American culture doesn't seem to do.

(1:41:23-1:41:47) Daria Rudnik
I mean, I don't know. I can't compare. It kind of feels like natural. Again, starting from Pushkin and Dermontov, they had those, again, they kind of talked to each other and they had this community and clubs of writers, composers, artists sharing their view of the world.

(1:41:47-1:42:15) Daria Rudnik
Okay. Is that where the idea of the Masalit came from? Okay. Yeah. Is that where the idea of the Masalit came from? That concept of like a literary club where you would just go and like hang out? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Masalit is, it's, it's, it's an institution. Okay. That's the Soviet kind of institution. Like you have something for writers, you have something for artists, you have something for engineers. So kind of, or for theaters.

(1:42:16-1:42:43) Leadership Lessons
oh okay got it i had the thought so okay so that so it's it's kind of it's institution like moscow uh society of literature uh writers right right right yes i mean you would you would know that because it's yeah yeah i would not that that i thought of it as like um so the image that i had in my head was like of a of a private club in new york

(1:42:43-1:43:08) Daria Rudnik
It's bureaucracy. It's pure bureaucracy. Okay. And all those, all those like rooms that you're reading, it's like the bureaucratic way of like supporting and not supporting of keeping those writers who write the right thing. And the talent that literally talent is not the talent of like good writing. They're bad writers. They're bad poets. I mean, they're bad writers.

(1:43:08-1:43:30) Daria Rudnik
But it's not because no one sees that they're bad. It's because, I mean, they write the right stuff that suits Soviet regime. And that's why they are in this institution and have access to the benefits because they support the government and the politics, everything. Yeah.

(1:43:33-1:44:01) Leadership Lessons
So we're doing a video, obviously, a video version of this podcast as well as an audio version of the podcast. And on the audio version, you can't hear me. But Daria just saw me, and you'll see it on the video version. My mouth just dropped open because a connection just clicked over in my head. I don't know if Daria heard the click or not. But now there's about eight other things that make sense in the book that I couldn't figure out. And the biggest thing that I couldn't figure out was why...

(1:44:02-1:44:28) Leadership Lessons
When homeless came to Masolet to tell them about Berlioz getting his head cut off with the tram car, they mobbed him and threw him out. Well, sent him to the mental institution. I couldn't figure that out for the life of me. That was one of the more confusing things. But now that you said the thing about they were propagandists basically for the regime...

(1:44:29-1:44:56) Leadership Lessons
they couldn't got it they couldn't tolerate having him in even if he was telling the truth because it would interrupt the caviar and the fish got it he was like a sub stacker these days in america he's kind of like a don't want to be invited to the don't well okay so so we have this dynamic in america now where

(1:44:57-1:45:23) Leadership Lessons
people who run podcasts, people who run sub stacks, people who engage in independent journalism, people who are on what is now known as X, formerly Twitter, right? People who are publishing blogs or newsletters, right? That take a particularly oppositional view to whatever the current administration is doing, Republican or Democrat, it doesn't matter. Those folks are usually not invited to the party, right?

(1:45:25-1:45:52) Leadership Lessons
when official channels get together and have conferences and give each other rewards and all this kind of stuff, right? And the thing is, the people doing the things that are independent and are interesting are telling far more truth than whatever comes out of the official channels. So I always say this, no one's watching CNN here in the country.

(1:45:53-1:46:17) Leadership Lessons
CNN pulls maybe 250,000 viewers on a Saturday night. I don't know. Sorry, not on a Saturday night. On a regular weeknight. No one watches CNN inside of this country. YouTube cat channels pull more views. And so what are people listening to? Where are people getting their information? Well, they're getting their information from

(1:46:18-1:46:28) Leadership Lessons
podcasts and to my point, YouTubers and to individuals who are not being allowed into those official channels. They're not being allowed into the Masaline.

(1:46:29-1:46:58) Leadership Lessons
They could never get in. Kitchens, big kitchen, big Soviet kitchen. Right. It's a big American kitchen. Podcasting is just a big American kitchen. Writing on Substack is just a big American kitchen. Yes, exactly. Okay. So that was the click over in my head. Thank you, Dario. You cleared up a whole part of that book for me that I was confused by, but I was like, I'll figure it out eventually. And so you helped me figure that out. Thank you. Okay.

(1:47:00-1:47:00) Leadership Lessons
Um,

(1:47:05-1:47:30) Leadership Lessons
One of the things that we pick up from Master and Margarita, right? And Daria, I want to thank you for coming on the podcast. This was great. I loved having a conversation with you, talking with you about this great book. We may indeed revisit this book because there's other things that we only covered like book one of the Master and Margarita. There's a whole book too. There's a whole bunch of other stuff that happens in there. And that's where the aforementioned Margarita shows up and really...

(1:47:31-1:47:58) Leadership Lessons
Well, she's twirled around the room and does what she needs to do. Oh, and there's some resolution to Woland as well in there, which I'm not going to tell you all what that is, but you need to go get the book. But I want to sort of set up this thing here. So one of the things we're trying to do on this podcast this year is we're trying to talk more about solutions to problems than problems themselves. Okay.

(1:47:58-1:48:26) Leadership Lessons
And we've talked a little bit today about lying, and we've talked a little bit about myths and deceptions, talked a little bit about moral character and courage, and what does it mean to actually engage with courage inside of an organization. We've talked about the political consequences a little bit of engaging with moral clarity, things like job loss or loss of promotion or demotion, right?

(1:48:26-1:48:56) Leadership Lessons
Or even having to give up your job and go do something someplace else, right? One of the things that gets folks who are in a postmodern, who are steeped in a postmodern mindset, one of the things that makes them feel really icky sometimes is this idea that there could be such a thing as moral clarity. Like there are right, there is right, and there is wrong, and there are a difference between the two of those things.

(1:48:58-1:49:27) Leadership Lessons
And the reason it gets the postmodern mind feeling icky is because it implies that perhaps there is something outside of how I feel about a thing. There might be something else that's outside of that. And that might be the higher thing. There's a lot of confusion about moral clarity. And so if the dominant culture, this is the question I have for you. If the dominant culture that you're in in an organization is driven by lies,

(1:49:29-1:49:53) Leadership Lessons
How can leaders get moral clarity? How can they get that? What's the way forward for them? Because I think you have to get clarity before you can take courageous action. And there's a model that we use with our clients called the three C's model, right? And the first C is clarity. Because if you're not clear, then a whole lot of other things just don't happen, right? Right.

(1:49:54-1:50:22) Leadership Lessons
But then you have to be candid, which means you have to be able to actually say what the truth is and actually know it clearly in your brain. And then there's courage, right? And then that's where you act, you implement, right? And those three Cs have to go together. It's a triangle or a virtuous circle, right? Okay. How can leaders get moral clarity in a culture where that may not be the thing that's valued?

(1:50:25-1:50:51) Daria Rudnik
It's not even valued. It's like banned. Or we'll go, I like that one too. If it's banned, you know, if moral clarity is banned, how can leaders get moral clarity? I mean, my immediate response would be, I mean, you need to be born like that. Because what is the question? It's obvious. It's clear. You can see it. Like Margarita sees that. Master sees that.

(1:50:53-1:51:18) Daria Rudnik
But when we look at the Ivan homeless and see the transformation from this voice of propaganda to this moral clarity, the candid and courage. So he went through this catharsis, through the absurd of what's happening with him and around him.

(1:51:20-1:51:44) Daria Rudnik
had again I guess the first that they had is the courage so it's kind of a question is that right what is truth and it's probably I even say the courage comes first because you need courage to look to seek for truth because it's very convenient to go to Peridilkina every summer and have this fish and it's nice

(1:51:45-1:52:14) Leadership Lessons
But once you start asking uncomfortable questions, you might get sent to... You might be called a lunatic and sent to... You might wind up on a beach in Yalta. Yeah. That happens to one of the characters in there. Because not only does he not have moral clarity, he's hungover and confused. Which, by the way, that also runs through just as a pointer for everybody. Yeah.

(1:52:15-1:52:40) Leadership Lessons
The consumption of vodka runs through the master and margarita. Even Pontius Pilate, when he's questioning Yeshua, is doing so from a one-down position because his head is split with a hangover. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry. It's not a hangover. It's like he's sick. Yeah.

(1:52:41-1:53:09) Daria Rudnik
Yeah, I got the impression that it was a hangover. No, no, no, no. The thing is that he's sick, and he has this rapid headaches, very severe headaches. And Yeshua was the only person who could calm it down. Calm it down, right. Yeah, okay. And he sends them to death, knowing that he'll keep those terrible headaches, and he will have to live with those terrible headaches after that.

(1:53:13-1:53:40) Daria Rudnik
Another clip just went over in my head. Another clip just went over in my head. Go ahead. Unlike this, the part from the Bible, he sees the truth. He knows what the truth is. He knows that the issue is innocent. He knows that the issue is the only source of his being calm and his comfort. But he has no power. He's a great person.

(1:53:41-1:54:03) Leadership Lessons
pilot like pilot he's no power and he sends him and he has no courage right right right okay so great follow-up question if you have power but no courage what do you do if you're a leader with power but no courage and by the way there are a lot of those leaders in the world today

(1:54:05-1:54:18) Daria Rudnik
Well, he has no power. Real power. Because, I mean, he is ruled by the Caesar, by the city. He's a bureaucrat, yes. He has no power.

(1:54:19-1:54:43) Leadership Lessons
He thinks he does. He even tells Yeshua. He thinks he does. He thinks he does, right? And again, we have a lot of that in our world today. Like it's easy on this podcast. We always pick on the World Economic Forum. We always pick on those people who meet in Davros, eat expensive chicken and ride around in Switzerland and pick up chocolate and then tell us what they think is going to happen in the next like year.

(1:54:43-1:55:11) Leadership Lessons
right and invariably they're easy to pick on because number one it looks like they all stepped out of central casting for a james bond movie like they're all it is it's like they're all james bond villains you go watch a james bond villain and it's klaus schwab like i've said this before on the podcast it's probably going to get me canceled it's fine it's the truth everybody can see it but that's number one and they think that they have a lot of power

(1:55:12-1:55:37) Leadership Lessons
Bill Gates thinks he has a lot of power about what you and I eat. He thinks he does. And yet, and I'm not asking you to comment on Bill Gates. And yet, when I go to the grocery store, the Bill Gates sponsored meat is the only meat on the aisle that doesn't get bought. Nobody's touching that. Nobody.

(1:55:39-1:56:06) Leadership Lessons
I saw this during COVID. Literally, you walk in and the meat brought to you by the former head of Microsoft is just sitting there. It's just sitting there on the shelf. And every other piece of meat that came from a cow is gone. And if it's a choice between Bill Gates' meat or eating nothing or eating vegetables, people are going to go eat the vegetables.

(1:56:07-1:56:34) Leadership Lessons
And yet and still, he keeps getting invited to the World Economic Forum and telling me how things are going to be. There's a disconnect here. It's the same disconnect between Pontius Pilate and Jesus. Leaders who have power, or at least think they do, but don't have moral clarity. They're not listening to the podcast. It's okay. We could be truthful. They're not listening to me. So what do they do? We could be truthful here. What do they do? We're having a kitchen conversation. What do they do?

(1:56:35-1:56:58) Daria Rudnik
And they don't do nothing because they don't have the clarity. They don't have courage. I mean, if you don't see that you need to change, you want change. And it's just stupid to try and change someone who doesn't want to be changed. Right. Who finds comfort. And the thing is change what you can change. You can change your own...

(1:56:59-1:57:29) Daria Rudnik
your own team. If you're a leader of a team, you can change your own organization. If you're a leader of an organization, you can change your community. If you're the leader of a community, there are lots of things you can change. So just don't waste your time on those who don't want. One of the questions I always ask at the end of the podcast is this one. And I ask it of every guest who comes on.

(1:57:29-1:57:57) Leadership Lessons
how can people, how can leaders use the master and Margarita to stay on the path of leadership? How can they use the insights from this book to stay on the path of leadership, Daria? Leadership and being a decent human being, which is, I mean, leaders are an example of decent behavior, what's right and what's wrong.

(1:57:59-1:58:15) Daria Rudnik
So I guess, as I said in the beginning, seeing the variety of leadership possibilities, you don't have to be in power to be a leader. You don't have to have your own vision to be a leader. There are lots of different ways to lead.

(1:58:16-1:58:43) Daria Rudnik
And making choices, making every day choices, small choices, helping people around you, saving who you can't save and who want to be saved and not wasting your time and energy on those who don't. I agree with all of that. And I would add.

(1:58:45-1:59:10) Leadership Lessons
It is critically important, I think, in our time, not only in an American context, but in a global context. I particularly think it's critical right now in our particular global moment to, as a leader, have the clarity to understand the difference between what's a myth and what's the truth.

(1:59:12-1:59:40) Leadership Lessons
And have the courage to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Because I fundamentally believe that we are turning a corner on chaos. And we're turning a corner on confusion. And we're turning a corner on despair. The winter is almost over. And the people, the leaders who led during winter,

(1:59:41-2:00:09) Leadership Lessons
if they cannot change to lead in the spring, will be left by the side of the road. We don't need more of an explanation of the chaos. We need more of an explanation of the difference between the myth and the truth and then leading people invariably towards the truth and all of the outcomes that come from that. To Daria's point,

(2:00:09-2:00:33) Leadership Lessons
Does not have to be large things. I'm not asking you to start a podcast or do a sub stack. I'm not asking you to self-publish a book or even type up somebody else's published book and pass it around. Although I think that's a really good idea. I'm not asking you to go face down Stalin or Pontius Pilate or Bill Gates or Klaus Schwab or whoever. I'm not asking you to do any of that.

(2:00:35-2:00:59) Leadership Lessons
All of this starts wherever you are at, whether you're in Madurai, India, or Moscow, Russia, or Lagos, Nigeria. All of this starts, as it always does, everywhere in your own home, in your own backyard, with your own neighbors.

(2:01:00-2:01:30) Leadership Lessons
Start telling them the truth first. Start separating myths from truth in your own household first. Trust me, that'll give you plenty to do for the next few years. Just start there. Cut your eye teeth there. And then you'll have enough of a skin, enough of a shell to be able to handle whatever

(2:01:31-2:01:58) Leadership Lessons
snares or arrows may come about when you go into your larger community, when you go to your work, and even, again, starting locally, when you go to your local government official, your local bureaucracy. You'll be ready to speak the truth to them. And that's how the changes that we want to see get made are going to happen in

(2:01:59-2:02:29) Leadership Lessons
As we enter into the next spring high. I'm looking forward to it. I'm doing my part. I want to thank Daria Rudnick for coming on our podcast and for having a conversation with us. This was great. Love talking about Master and Margarita. And you can find her on all of the different places. So Daria, what are all the different places that we can find you? How do we get a hold of you?

(2:02:29-2:02:55) Daria Rudnik
Where are you located at? Because we'll have all the links to everything that she's about to tell us in the show notes. But Daria, how can we get a hold of you if we want to talk with you more? First of all, yeah. First of all, thanks, Aysen. I mean, it was fun talking about that. I haven't. This was like talking in the kitchen. I haven't done it for a while.

(2:02:56-2:03:22) Leadership Lessons
Um, so yeah, and you can find me on LinkedIn. I mean, it's the easiest ways to find me on LinkedIn. All right. So we will have access to, um, all of the different places on LinkedIn that you can get. Yeah. My website is there. Yeah. We'll have our website links in the show notes below the podcast player. Um, we'll have our LinkedIn, um, um, profile link, um, in the show notes below the player, wherever you listen to, uh, to this podcast.

(2:03:23-2:03:40) Leadership Lessons
Once again, thank you very much for listening to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast. And with that, we're out. Thank you for listening and subscribing to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast.

(2:03:41-2:04:09) Leadership Lessons
If you're listening to this on any of the major podcast players, like iTunes, Google Podcasts, or Spotify, please go ahead and leave us a five-star review and write a little bit in there. A couple of sentences is good enough. That actually helps us game those algorithms that I was just maybe addressing. And, of course, it helps us grow the show. Tell all your family, tell all your friends, and tell the leaders in your life that you know –

(2:04:10-2:04:20) Leadership Lessons
that need to be listening to this show, that this show exists. By the way, if you want to get started on the leadership path yourself, or you know some people who need to go on the leadership path,

(2:04:20-2:04:48) Leadership Lessons
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(2:04:49-2:04:58) Leadership Lessons
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(2:04:59-2:05:23) Leadership Lessons
You don't like videos, you don't like training, but you really like the podcast? Well, I would also recommend reading a book. Matter of fact, I'd recommend reading my most recent book, 12 Rules for Leaders, The Foundation of Intentional Leadership. You can get that in paperback, hardcover, or as an e-book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, IngramSpark, and any other place that you order books online.

(2:05:24-2:05:54) Leadership Lessons
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