Timothy Snyder ─ Ukraine and Russia in a Fracturing Europe
Published 2016-05-03
Timothy Snyder is the Bird White Housum Professor of History at Yale University, specializing in the history of central and eastern Europe. He received his B.A. from Brown University and his doctorate from the University of Oxford, where he was a British Marshall scholar at Balliol College. He has also held fellowships in Paris, Warsaw, and at Harvard, where he was an Academy Scholar. A frequent guest at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, he has spent about ten years in Europe. He speaks five and reads ten European languages. Among his publications are five award-winning books, all of which have been translated: Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz KellesKrauz(1998); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (2008); and Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010). Bloodlands has won ten awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Leipzig Award for European Understanding. It has been translated into twenty-five languages, was named to twelve book-of-the-year lists, and was a bestseller in four countries. Most recently Snyder helped the late Tony Judt compose a thematic intellectual history, entitled Thinking the Twentieth Century (2012), which is appearing in fourteen translations. Snyder is also the coeditor of two volumes: Wall Around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in Europe and North America (2000) and Stalinism and Europe: Terror, War, Domination, (2014). He is at work on four books: a study of the Holocaust, a biography of Marx, a global history of eastern Europe, and a family history of nationalism. His scholarly articles have appeared in Past and Present, the Journal of Cold War Studies, and a number of other journals; he has also written for The New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, and The New Republic as well as for The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and other newspapers. He takes regular part in conferences on Holocaust education and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Modern European History and East European Politics and Societies. He is a member of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and sits on the advisory councils of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and other organizations.
All Comments (21)
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Fascinating that this lecture already mentions everything about Russian public discourse, that most people only became aware of in 2022. Wish I had seen this 6 years earlier when it came out.
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This is incredible listening to this in March 2022. This was very predictive. Amazing.
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Excellent lecture and yet so little views and likes on youtube. Shows, in my humble opinion, our growing problem with a lack of education and curiosity of people in history and politics. Sad.
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This is an amazingly insightful analysis of the current Russian situation.
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1:09:55 Cassandra with a sense for comedic timing. As a person who was thoroughly in the "Putin is a calculating pragmatic"-camp, I have to concede that his streak continues and mine has ended.
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He is always right....listening to it in July 2022
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Excellent lecture. Thanks for the recording.
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putins affiliation with german is well in line with Illin being a "german philosopher writing in Russian"
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Interesting and thought provoking.
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Great lekture….more please
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about new "Molotov-Ribbentrop pact". "Poland’s parliamentary speaker, Radoslaw Sikorski, has been quoted as saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed to Poland’s then leader in 2008 that they divide Ukraine between themselves." I believe Hungary was ok with it.
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Timothy Snyder has marvellous insight into Putin’s behaviour. Nevertheless I’m cautious about ascribing too much credit to Ilyin’s influence. Perhaps more accurately Putin’s use of Ilyin could be seen as a rather shallow attempt at self-justification by a criminally minded thug, which is what Putin appears to be. Criminals often justify their bad behaviour by claiming they were forced to commit crimes by others’ bad behaviour. 1:27:37
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Very interesting and insightful. One thing bothered me though - speaking of corruption mr. Snyder said "Russia is down there with Ukraine, Bangladesh etc". I don't know much about Bangladesh, but I'm having serious doubts that Ukraine has a level of corruption that is as low as Russia's. The corruption perception ratings that are used to "evaluate" this are very much imprecise given how much tolerance to corruption is present in Russia and how much intolerance (and general media hype) for corruption is in Ukraine - which impacts perception a lot, therefore producing results that speak nothing about a level of corruption itself, but rather of a level of intolerance to corruption - which is almost the opposite of what's measured.
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Ivan Ilyin's (1883-1954) is being resurrectied by Putin
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Athena, not Aphrodite, comes from Zeus's skull ;-)
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One of the original thinkers on Russia!
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some of the questions from the audience didn't age well...
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Nice talk, unfortunately tarnished by the horrid "Right?" tic.
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Can we also say that Trump has similar fascist thinking when he tried to organise a coup ?
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There is probably a lot to his arguments but the big reason for Russian taking over Crimea was that it was a warm water port and a strategic port for the Russian navy. When the EU, the US and NATO made a play for the Ukraine they didn't take that into account and that woke the bear. The other problem that the Russians were vocal about was that they didn't understand the US Bush Chaney policy to destabilize the Mideast and Africa willy-nilly.
