Timothy Snyder
Modern Eastern Europe
Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He speaks five and reads ten European languages. His chief books are Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (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); Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), Thinking the Twentieth Century (with Tony Judt, 2012); Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015); On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017); and The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018). Snyder is co-editor of The Wall Around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in Europe and North America (2001); Stalin and Europe: Terror, War, Domination (2013); and The Balkans as Europe (2018). His essays are collected in Ukrainian History, Russian Politics, European Futures (2014), and The Politics of Life and Death (2015). Snyder’s work has appeared in forty languages and has received about as many prizes. He has received state orders from Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland. He was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, where he earned his D.Phil., and has received the Carnegie and Guggenheim fellowships. Among other distinctions are the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Foundation for Polish Science prize in the social sciences, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, the Dutch Auschwitz Committee award, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought. He has appeared in media around the world, including major films. His words has been quoted in political demonstrations in several countries. He is writing a book about freedom.
Scholarly Articles
- “The Causes of the Holocaust,” Contemporary European History, Contemporary European History, Vol. 21, No. 2, 149-168.
- “The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing, 1943,” Past and Present, 179 (2003), 197-234. 1a and 1b.
- “To Resolve the Ukrainian Problem Once and for All’: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland, 1943-1947,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Volume 1, 2 (1999), 86-120.
- “Leben und Sterben der Juden in Wolhynien,” Osteuropa, 57, 4, (2007), 123-142.
- “Memory of Sovereignty and Sovereignty Over Memory: Twentieth-Century Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania” in Jan-Werner Müller, ed., Memory and Power in Postwar Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 39-58.
- “Die Armia Krajowa aus ukrainischer Perspektive,” in Bernard Chiari and Jerzy Kochanowski, eds., Auf der Suche nach nationaler Identität: Geschichte und Mythos der polnischen Heimatarmee, Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2003.
- “A Polish Socialist For Jewish Nationality: Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1872-1905),” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 12 (1999), 257-271.
- “Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1872-1905): A pioneering scholar of modern nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism, 3, 2 (1997), 1-20.
- “The Poles: Western Aspirations, Eastern Minorities,” in Charles King and Neil Melvin, eds., Nations Abroad: Diasporas and National Identity in the Former Soviet Union, Boulder: Westview, 1998, 179-208.
- “Soviet Monopoly,” in John Williamson, ed., Economic Consequences of Soviet Disintegration, Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1993, 176-243.
- “Three Endings and a Beginning: Shimon Redlich’s Galicia,” on Shimon Redlich, Together and Apart In Brzezany: Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, 1919-1945, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002, in Yad Vashem Studies, 34, 2006.
- “Pourquoi le socialisme marxist a-t-il méconnu l’importance du phénomène national? A la lumiere des enseignements que l’on peut tirer du congres de Londres (1896) de la IIe Internationale,”Revue des Études Slaves, 71, 2 (1999), 243-262.
- “Akcja ‘Wisla’ a homogenicznosc polskiego spoleczenstwa.” in Jan Pisulinski et al eds, Akcja Wisla, Warsaw: Instytut Pamieci Narodowej, 2003, 49-56.
Selected Book Reviews
- “Caught Between Hitler and Stalin” (on “Defiance,” a film directed by Edward Zwick and Defiance by Nechama Tec), New York Review of Books, 30 April 2009.
- “Hitler’s Dialectic of Death,” on Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, London: Allen Unwin, 2008, in Times Literary Supplement, 14 August 2008.
- “The Unknown Holocaust,” on Joshua Rubernstein and llya Altman, eds., The Unknown Black Book: The Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008, in Truthdig, 15 February 2008.
- “At the Deep End,” on Abram Brumberg, Journeys Through Vanishing Worlds, London: Scarith, in Times Literary Supplement, 4 April 2008.
- “Betrayed on All Sides,” on Jan Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An essay in Historical Interpretation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, Times Literary Supplement, 6 October 2006, 27.
- Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, New York: Penguin, 2005, in IWM Newsletter, Vienna, Spring 2006.
- “Wartime Lies,” on Czeslaw Milosz, Legends of Modernity: Essays and Letters From Occupied Poland, trans. Madeline Levine, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005, The Nation, January 9/16 2006, 26-29.
- “Revolution Without the Workers,” on David Ost, The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Eastern Europe, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005, for Times Literary Supplement, 23 and 30 December 2005, 39.
- “Keys to Kiev,” on Serhii Plokhy, The Unmaking of Imperial Russia: Mykhaïlo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005, for Times Literary Supplement, 16 December 2005, 25.
- “The Old Country,” on Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, for Times Literary Supplement, 25 March 2005, 34-36.
- “Ways of Dying,” on Kate Brown, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004, and Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004, Times Literary Supplement, 24 September 2004.
- “Pity the First Ally,” on Norman Davies, Rising ‘44: The Battle for Warsaw, London: Macmillan, 2003, for Times Literary Supplement, 20 February 2004, 13.
- “The Inevitability of the Unexpected,” review of Roman Szporluk, Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2000, in Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen Newsletter (Vienna), 76, Spring 2002, 25-26.
Selected Essays
- “Holocaust: The Ignored Reality,” New York Review of Books, 16 July 2009.
- “In the Shadow of Emperors and General Secretaries: On the origins of the nations of East Central Europe” (“W cieniu cesaerzy i sekretarzy”), Tygodnik Powszechny, 27 July 2008, 24-25.
- “Ukraine: The Orange Revolution,” with Timothy Garton Ash, New York Review of Books, 28 April 2005, 28-32.
- “War is Peace,” Prospect, Number 104, November 2004, 32-37.
- “A Legend of Freedom: Solidarity,” (“Legenda o wolnosci”), Tygodnik Powszechny, special edition on Solidarity, 4 September 2005.
- “The Ethnic Cleansing of Volhynia, 1943” (“Wolyn, rok 1943),” Tygodnik Powszechny (Cracow), 11 May 2003, 1, 7.
- “Five Centuries and Eight Years: Operation Vistula and the homogeneity of Polish society” (Piec wieków i osiem lat: ““Akcja ‘Wisla’ a homogenicznosc polskiego spoleczenstwa”), Tygodnik Powszechny, April 2002.
- “Poles and Czechs, Ten Years On,” Prospect, February 1999, 54-57.
Selected Editorials
- “What Soviet Economic Collapse Can Teach US Managers,” Christian Science Monitor, 30 August 1991.
- “Anti-Trust for the USSR,” Christian Science Monitor, 2 October 1991.
- “Western Economic Might Key to Helping East,” Christian Science Monitor, 2 January 1993 (with Gareth Cook).
- “Poland’s Communists Aren’t, Really,” Christian Science Monitor, 1 November 1993.
- “NATO Enlargement: A Bear at Rest Means a Safer U.S.,” Christian Science Monitor, 18 March 1998.
- “A Divided Ukraine Drifts Neither East nor West,” Christian Science Monitor, 31 March 1998.
- “What Americanization Has to Do With America,” Christian Science Monitor, 29 April 1998.
- “Poland’s Return to Europe is a Leap to Modernity,” Christian Science Monitor, 21 May 1998.
- “Why Missile Defense is a Bad Idea,” Christian Science Monitor, 2 February 2001, with Philip Snyder.
- “A Call to Be More Civil,” Christian Science Monitor, 20 June 2008.
- “Grappling with an Emboldened Russia,” Boston Globe, 12 August 2008.
- “History Does Not End, Nor Do its Hard Lessons,” Chicago Tribune, 17 August 2008