Tim Snyder -- "If Ukrainians Hadn't Fought Back... And Kyiv's ancient normality (redux)" [View all]

[ancianita]

First, an interview.

From: Euromaidan Press, Ukraine
Article by: Sławomir Sierakowski
Source: Polityka.pl
Translated by: Svitlana Gusak
Edited by: Christine Chraibi

Sławomir Sierakowski: What is Putin’s ultimate goal in this war?

Timothy Snyder: That’s no big secret: to destroy Ukraine as a state and exterminate Ukrainians as a nation. I’d like to make it very clear that such an idea is akin to genocide. If accomplishing that plan were to require – and that’s what it will require – physical extermination of Ukraine’s intelligentsia or exile to Siberia – then that’s what will happen.

SS: So, doesn’t that make Putin a softer version of Stalin, and an equally dangerous leader?

TS: He’s different. Stalin never doubted the existence of the Ukrainian nation and in a way, he was cautious of it, hence the Holodomor famine and the 1930s Great Terror in the Ukrainian SSR. Putin, who believes no Ukrainian nation exists, has a more radical perspective compared to Stalin; it takes us back to Hitler’s idea of human masses that can be quickly broken by willful violent actions.

Thus, we’re way beyond conventional politics, face to face with classical tyranny. We’re dealing with an aged leader whose mindset is based not on contemporary categories, but on the concept of eternity. From Putin’s perspective, facts don’t really matter. He either takes no notice of the practical barriers that we’re aware of or believes them to be western propaganda or a delusion. In essence, Putin sees the world as he himself perceives it.

https://euromaidanpress.com/author/worldmedia/

Second, Snyder's Petryshyn Memorial Lecture in Ukrainian Studies, "Ukraine: A Normal Country"

From the article: "Kyiv's ancient normality (redux)"

… After the First World War, Ukrainians tried to establish a state on the ruins of both empires. The attempt was typical for the time and place, but the difficulties were extreme. Ukrainians found themselves amidst an unenviable crossfire of Russian Whites, the Red Army, and the Polish Army. Much of the "Russian civil war" was fought in Ukraine; by its exhausting end, the Bolsheviks needed some answer to the Ukrainian question. That is why the USSR took the form that it did in 1922, a nominal federation of national republics. When Boris Yeltsin removed Russia from the USSR in 1991, he signed an agreement with Ukrainian and Belarusian Soviet leaders, representing the official founding entities of the USSR.

Ukraine was the deadliest place in the world during the time when Hitler and Stalin were in power, between 1933 and 1945. It was seen as a breadbasket from both Moscow and Berlin. Collectivization of agriculture led to a political famine that killed about four million people in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933. A similar desire to redirect Ukrainian food supplies animated Hitler's war planning. The first major German mass shooting of Jews, at Kamianats' Podils'kyi, took place in Ukraine. The largest instance of the Holocaust by bullets, at Babyn Iar, was the murder of Kyiv Jews.

Stalin and Hitler began the Second World War as de facto allies against Poland. In 1939, they agreed that Poland would be divided and its eastern half controlled by the USSR. In the end, those same formerly Polish (west Ukrainian) territories were added to Soviet Ukraine in 1945, as were some lands from Czechoslovakia . Crimea was transferred to Ukraine nine years later. In this way, the Soviet Union formed the boundaries of Ukraine, just as it formed the boundaries of Russia, and of all of its component republics.

The histories of Ukraine and Russia are of course related, via the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, and via Orthodox religion, and much else. The modern Ukrainian and Russian nations are both still in formation, and entanglements between them are to be expected, now and into the future. But Russia is, in its early expansion and contemporary geography, a country deeply connected to Asia; this is not true of Ukraine. The history of Kyiv and surrounding lands embraces certain European trends that are less pronounced in Russia. Poland and Lithuania and the Jews are indispensable referents for any account of the Ukrainian past. Ukraine cannot be understood without the European factors of expansive Lithuania and Poland, of renaissance, of Reformation, of national revival, of attempts at national statehood. The landmarks of the world wars are planted deeply in both countries, but especially so in Ukraine.

The history of Kyiv is, so to speak, normal in the extreme. It falls easily into a normal European periodization. The additional complexity and intensity of these typical experiences can help us see the whole of European history more clearly. Some of these references are different, or absent, in Russia. This can make it difficult for Russians (even in good faith) to interpret Ukrainian history, or the history that is "shared": the “same” event, for example the Bolshevik revolution or Stalinism, can look different from different perspectives.

The myth of eternal brotherhood, now offered in bad faith by the Russian president, must be understood in the categories of politics rather than history. But a little bit of history can help us to see the bad faith, and to understand the politics."

https://huri.harvard.edu/news/timothy-snyder-kyivs-ancient-normality-redux