The list of interviews relating to this book fills nearly four pages on his CV. Greater domestic demands coincided with the runaway commercial success of Bloodlands. 'Having two children is quite different from having one,' Snyder admits. In such times one writes more desperate books.Ĭonfusing one's own state of mind with the state of the world is one of the professional hazards of the God-professor. Truth became relative, time 'more fragmented and elusive'. This moment marked the start of an 'era of transformation' that ended with the Trump presidency. The joy over the birth of a child mixed with shock and grief over the catastrophe, which killed a friend. Second, a plane with a Polish government delegation crashed near Smolensk killing those on board.

What happened to the talented historian Snyder? According to his own diagnosis, 'human character' itself changed 'on or about April 2010'.

On Tyranny (2017) had been his weakest book before this one, but it was a political pamphlet, not a scholarly study. An uneven book as far as its historical interpretation was concerned, it included a chilling warning of the potentially genocidal consequences of the unfolding environmental crisis. Black Earth (2015) was an attempt to read the Holocaust as a lesson for our time.

Bloodlands (2010) enthused professional historians less, but it was a supremely competent history of the region and its terrible 20th century. These books changed the way many of us thought about the history of eastern Europe. Three books made his name among specialists: The Reconstruction of Nations (2003), Sketches from a Secret War (2005) and The Red Prince (2008). Snyder is among the most talented historians of his generation. Refreshingly, Snyder adds that voting for Trump is also caused by the intellectual inferiority of drug-addled brains. When Americans vote for Donald Trump it is because of 'Russian trolls and bots'. When Germans oppose liberal immigration policies it's because of Russian fake news.

When a substantial section of Britons decide they want out of the EU, it's because of Russia's 'cyber campaign'. When Polish politicians stumble over secret recordings showing the level of their corruption, Snyder diagnoses a 'quiet emergence of totalitarianism'. Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom abounds in hyperbole, factual imprecision, speculation, questionable judgment and repetition.

The road to unfreedom timothy snyder