Bloodlands

"Each of the living bore a name." If there is a theme to this admirable book, that's it. "Each of the living bore a name." That's how Yale history professor Timothy Snyder starts his concluding chapter: "Conclusion: Humanity." Then he names a few: a toddler who imagined he saw wheat in the fields before he died; a Polish Jew who foresaw that he would only be reunited with his beloved wife "under the ground"; an eleven-year-old Russian girl who kept a diary as she starved to death in a besieged Leningrad in 1941; a twelve-year-old Jewish girl, Junita Vishniatskaia, who wrote to her father in Belarus in 1942 and told him about the death pits where Junita and her mother would soon be killed together. " `Farewell forever' was the last line of her last letter to him. `I kiss you, I kiss you.' " I'd never come across professor Snyder's work until I read, for review, his collaborative conversation with Tony Judt, one of my favorite contemporary historians, now, alas, dead, in Thinking the Twentieth Century (due out in February, 2012). I was intrigued by Snyder's comments in that book, by a perspective on twentieth century European history that leaned much more on what had occurred in eastern Europe than the westernized history I'd absorbed in graduate school. Judt obviously admired Snyder's book. I thought, why not?, let's read it. I'm glad I did. Bloodlands isn't easy to read. It talks of horrific deeds, horrible people. But the picture it paints differs from the picture of the Holocaust I learned, both by predating the killing and by moving the largest portion of it eastward. We think we know what happened to the victims in the Second World War but most of our knowledge, Snyder emphasizes, comes from Americans' experience of the western rim of the National Socialist world. There is little awareness of what took place in the true killing grounds of the 1930s and 40s, the zone between Germany and Russia -the Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, etc.- where fourteen million people died as first the Soviets, then the Germans, then the Soviets again, and then their puppet states, swept over the area, killing or displacing people for no other reason than that they belonged to the wrong ethnic group. Snyder is uniquely qualified to write this history. There is first of all the breadth and depth of his research: he has read widely in ten languages: German, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Yiddish, Czech, Slovak, French and English. There is also the exemplary clarity of the narrative: a tangled and complicated history, with many parties, has been presented in linear order. Furthermore, Snyder discusses fully both the ideological underpinnings that drove otherwise sane human beings to perform unspeakable deeds and the muddled actions that resulted as they attempted to bring to life despicable beliefs. A final virtue is passion. Snyder narrates the facts neutrally as a good historian should but his indignation breaks through the surface time and again, redeeming the surface dispassion of a horrific narrative. Books like this redeem history from any charge of dilettantism. History should change people, or at least inform them, so they can make more humane choices in the future. If any serious work of history can do that, it might be Snyder's. I've not read a book that moved me to think about its subject as much or as long as this one since long ago I read -and could not forget-- Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jewry (1st ed., 1961; 3rd ed., 2003)

I began reading this book as a tool for gaining a better understanding of what is going on in the Ukraine. There is no understanding of Ukraine's current situation without understanding the cultural, social and criminal history laid out in this groundbreaking book. The key to Bloodlands is that it is based upon STATISTICS. This book is not based upon he said she said third party accounts. That is all that German histories of the Holocaust can be since the key point is that 95% of "Holocaust" deaths did not occur in or near Germany. They occurred in Eastern Europe, and the Allies never even reached the places where the killing happened. The Nazis were meticulous record keepers and they also had plenty of help from the local populations of the countries they invaded. Timothy Snyder brings a wealth of statistical evidence to bear on the subject of Genocide. Ukrainians are begging us today to free them from the Holodomor denying Russians. I hate to admit this, but I did not even understand what the Holodomor was. The "History" books sold me on the lie that Stalin was just doing what he had to do to establish the Soviet state and the Kulaks were a resistance group who had to be "dealt with". And there is the bizarre conundrum that Stalin was right ... the Kulaks and other dissenters who were shipped to the Gulag saved the Soviets by establishing industry in Siberia. We know that Stalin's brutality saved Russia (barely) in World War 2. I have always thought that this indisputable fact justified whatever Stalin did. But I know now that Ukrainians can never forget the Holodomor genocide. And the Russians have made an inexcusable mistake in denying that the Holodomor occurred. It is crucial to understand the Historical facts presented here in light of the Ukrainian/Russian crisis. The Hitler vs. Stalin Genocide comparison quickly reveals that there was not one Holocaust, but many. The author's premise that you need to compare genocides statistically in order to understand their true nature is clearly demonstrated. I must say that the planned starvation of the Ukrainian Holodomor exceeds by far any evil that can be conceived of. Stalin's wife did the right thing in shooting herself in the heart as a response to what Stalin was doing to the Ukrainians. Bloodlands relies on statistics from documents made available since the fall of the Soviet empire to expose the reality of what actually happened. The statistical analysis is backed up by humanizing eyewitness accounts. The author reduced me to tears repeatedly with the sorrowful vignettes he selected to elucidate what the cold statistics meant. When I started reading Bloodlands I was attracted by some of the Horrific statements made in the Preface but it was not clear to me what Timothy Snyder meant when he said that in order to understand Genocide you need to compare one Genocide to other Genocides. But it very quickly became clear that the Hollywood version of the Nazi concentration camps was quite civilized compared to brutal Einsatzgruppen massacres like Babi Yar. 90% of Holocaust deaths involved the victims being rounded up, thrown in a pit and shot on the spot. It was just in your face DEATH with no death camps or sad family goodbyes. I have watched footage of the shootings and now understand why Jews were so passive and simply lay down in the pits to be slaughtered. They were completely dehumanized and facing atrocities on a scale where it was better to be shot and get it over with. Victims don't write history but Timothy Snyder has done an eloquent job of speaking for them. Anyone who wants to understand this book needs to watch the actual murder footage on the Internet. (Einsatzgruppen, Holodomor, WW2 etc, It's all out there. Sickening stuff, but inescapable.) There is no hiding behind propaganda and lies in today's world ... the footage that is out there confirms what Bloodlands says. An important aspect of Bloodlands is to bring the individuals who suffered such atrocities to life. In addition to being a great student of History Timothy Snyder is also a great writer. He has a keen sense of how spirtuality manifests itself in every day life. We clearly see the people who are being massacred in human terms. After looking at the stats we are presented with a heartbreaking story of a simple human being who was senselessly and needlessly slaughtered. Bloodlands makes it clear from the outset that the German accounts of the Holocaust represent an insignificant 2% of the victims. We are introduced to the other 98% along the way. And we are presented with many surreal scenarios that were commonplace. Eg. A Ukrainian man is captured by the invading Bolsheviks and serves in the Red Army. He runs away to join Nationalist Partisans, is captured by the Nazis and fights for them against the Bolsheviks. He is again captured by the Bolsheviks and is sent to Siberia. Seemingly bizarre examples demonstrate the ephemeral nature of survival in the Bloodlands. What is clear is that since the Bloodlands were occupied twice by the Bolsheviks and once by the Nazis the hapless victims had no chance of self determination whatsoever. And if they survived at all they were fortunate. In considering what the message of this book is, the author is clear in his intentions to avoid political intrigues and focus on the Bloodlands as a source of food that was essential for both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks. What is shown here is that when survival is on the line, there are no laws that can govern the atrocities people are forced to commit. Since we are approaching population levels where food is becoming scarce again we need to remember; Russians are not just posturing over the Ukraine, that is their breadbasket. We need to understand the history of this region and how dangerous Russian denial of Holodomor is. Ukrainians won't accept that any more than Israelis will accept Holocaust deniers. At least the Holocaust is recognized by most people. Holodomor is not. We cannot comprehend how the Ukrainians must feel. One of the greatest atrocities in history and it's not even recognized. This is what I learned from Bloodlands; The victims of these atrocities are still here with us. They are Ukrainians. World War 2 is not over. If Ukrainians feel the way I think they feel, then the current situation is a life/death struggle that cannot be settled peacefully. Russian leaders need to learn a lesson from Pope John Paul II; he was the last person who needed to apologize for the massacre of Jews in Poland. Yet he did apologize because he recognized that it was a necessary step in the healing process. Timothy Snyder has big balls as a man in taking on this subject. It is clear to me why Historians simply want nothing to do with it. Reading the facts quite simply made me sick to my stomach. I can't imagine how the author remained immersed in this material for years. As readers we are indebted to him for providing an undeniable resource regarding the Genocides in Eastern Europe. By providing statistical analysis backed up by concrete examples he refutes those who seek to replace Historical fact with Nationalist Revisionist History. Bloodlands brings to mind the old axiom: Those who cannot learn from history are destined to repeat it.

This is an important book for Americans to read. We have a lot of romance surrounding World War II, for several reasons. First, the US and its allies won the war–in a relatively short period of time (Dec 1941 to August 1945). Second, it is the last war Americans can point to that nearly everyone agrees was a "just war" on our end. Indeed, my grandfather joined the Marines because he grew up admiring his older cousins who had served in WWII–though my grandfather’s experience in war (Vietnam) turned out very differently. Third, Americans’ sympathy for the Jews and their plight (as well as our historic support for the state of Israel) makes the Holocaust loom large in our cultural memory of WWII, and we like to think of ourselves as having liberated the Jews from a regime of consummate evil: Nazi Germany. This manifests itself in both serious movies about WWII (e.g., Saving Private Ryan) and films with more stereotyped portraits of Nazis (Indiana Jones movies and Inglourious Basterds come immediately to mind). Snyder’s book does not minimize the horror and gravity of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. Rather, his book carefully situates the various persecutions and murders of Jews within the larger historical context of two powerful regimes: first, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and second, Hitler’s rising Germany. He tells the story of Stalin’s plan to starve a third of Ukrainians in 1931, of the Molotov-Riggentrop Pact which carved up Poland and other states into spheres of Nazi and Soviet exploitation and oppression, and of the horrible loss of civilians and soldiers in Belarus, Poland, the Baltics, Ukraine, and Russia after Hitler violated the pact. The Eastern European front was far more bloody and horrific than the Western front. Snyder tells the big-picture narrative using shocking statistics of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions killed–but he also includes personal testimonies that humanize the individuals behind these numbingly high figures. The sufferings of these nations (and their constituent Jewish populations) are each unique, and Snyder treats them that way. Snyder presents to an English-speaking audience the cultural and geopolitical factors that led to the Holocaust. He speaks of how the Allies betrayed Eastern Europe, especially Poland and the Baltics, allowing them to fall under Soviet influence. (Perhaps the West didn’t know at the time how bad Soviet communism was, but there were signs that Western leaders should not have ignored.) It is all well and good to say, "Never again," but unless we understand the cultural and political backdrop of these atrocities, they will happen again. Bloodlands has helped me understand the historical backdrop of the setting in which I’m teaching (Northeastern Europe, within the "Bloodlands"). A third of my current students are American, a third are German, and a third are from former Soviet states, including Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova. As helpful as history can be, I also must resist the temptation to superimpose the histories of these countries on the individuals with which I am interacting. Most of my students are under 22, so they have no personal memory of life in their countries before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In his sobering conclusion, Snyder writes of the responsibility of the contemporary reader of historiography, especially the Western reader: "Ideologies also tempt those who reject them. Ideology, when stripped by time or partisanship of its political and economic connections, becomes a moralizing form of explanation for mass killing, one that comfortably separates the people who explain from the people who kill. It is convenient to see the perpetrator just as someone who holds the wrong idea and is therefore different for that reason. It is reassuring to ignore the importance of economics and the complications of politics, factors that might in fact be common to historical perpetrators and those who later contemplate their actions. It is far more inviting, at least today in the West, to identify with the victims than to understand the historical setting that they shared with perpetrators and bystanders in the bloodlands. The identification with the victim affirms a radical separation from the perpetrator. The Treblinka guard who starts the engine or the NKVD officer who pulls the trigger is not me, he is the person who kills someone like myself. Yet it is unclear whether this identification with victims brings much knowledge, or whether this kind of alienation from the murderer is an ethical stance. It is not at all obvious that reducing history to morality plays makes anyone moral." (399)

Well written, lots of factual data and full of personal and anecdotal stories. Coming from Eastern Europe and family that escaped Romanian communism, one pet peeve or historical complaint is the use of incorrect maps of Romania, probably 80% of the time they are wrong and show the Habsburg empire Romania pre-WW1 which took much of northwestern part and Transylvania away even though ethnically dominated by Romanians. Since this book is of WW2 era, maps should be correct and display Romania after its land was returned post WW1. Excellent for American Democrats to understand the roots of their ideology from Socialism and Communism, Stalin’s exponentially higher evil compared to Hitler’s; one focused on racial killing a certain group and the other killed everyone, Ukrainians, Baltics, his own people and eventually out of favour party members in the tens of millions, similar to today’s Progressives who eventually eat their own. Book allows one to see how the Communists could harbour completely contradictory ideas at the same time, similar to today’s Liberals.

“Without history, the memories become private, which today means national; and the numbers become public, which is to say an instrument in the international competition for martyrdom.” One such number is 33,761. That is the number of Jews shot at Babi Yar, near Kiev, in the Ukraine. On numerous occasions throughout this monumental and essential history, Timothy Snyder uses very precise figures such as 33,761. Admittedly, it rubbed me the wrong way, since in the world of much uncertainty, as Heisenberg and others have proclaimed, it is impossible to know such a number, with that type of certainty and precision. But on the very last page of his account, the author, a Yale historian, explained fully why it is so important to use the “odd” number. It is the humanity that is revealed in the “1”, which can be multiplied by a million or more. It is the fragments of the stories of individuals who once had a real name, that have been preserved in diaries, or the memories of others, or simply a departing sentence scratched on a wall. Snyder does also use “round” numbers, as in 14,000,000. That is his estimate of the number of CIVILIAN deaths in an area he defines as the “Bloodlands,” between 1933 and 1945. It is an area that stretches from St. Petersburg in the north, encompasses the entire eastern shore of the Baltic to Danzig, all of Poland, and on, down to the entire Crimea, and touching the Don River in the east. One of the many strengths of this book is the numerous excellent maps set within the narrative. His contributions to our understanding of what happened in that space and time are numerous. Central is his examination of the disparate motives behind these numerous deaths, and to present a “balanced” account, in a world of madness. Snyder starts in the Ukraine, with Stalin’s efforts to collectivize agriculture, which lead to the death, by starvation, of millions. Many others were deported to the “Gulag.” Next there was the “Terror,” in the late ‘30’s, in which Stalin purged many in the leadership ranks of the Soviet Union, with a particular focus on the Poles. In fact, the “Polish Military Organization” was simply invented for the purpose of justifying the terror. Though the Soviet Union promoted an image of their tolerance towards minorities, which many in the West, probably at one time including myself, accepted, with the “you can make an omelet without breaking a few eggs” rationalization, Snyder concludes otherwise, to a stark degree. Next there was the brief period that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were allies, which, in part, resulted in the partition of Poland between them, and the calculated decimation of the Polish leadership. What more can be said about the Holocaust and the Jews? Actually, quite a lot, I found. Once again, Snyder condemns best in measured, factual analysis. He deals with the “big picture,” and demonstrates how, after the German failure to take Moscow in 1941, that the destruction of European Jewry became a wartime German objective. He names numerous concentration camps I had never heard of, because they were taken by the Red Army. Prior to reading Snyder’s account I was under the impression that the gas chambers had to be constructed because there was some natural “limit” whereby soldiers could not be ordered to shoot and kill unarmed men, woman and children, and be expected to obey. The soldiers themselves would simply rebel and refuse to participate in these heinous crimes. Not so, apparently, as the author documents how so very many were simply shot, including all those at Babi Yar. Amos Oz, the Israeli novelist once proclaimed that “the dead of the Six Day War belong to all of us; the dead of the Lebanese War belong only to their mother’s.” Snyder posits a similar issue concerning a Soviet Ukrainian Jew who had once lived in an area considered to be Poland. She can be claimed by four different national entities; who does she belong to? And to what political purpose today will these entities use her death? And like Bernard Schlick’s principle character in The Reader , who is accused of war crimes, but asks the Judge: “What would you have done?” and receives no reply, Snyder cautions against assuming the identity of the victim, and raises the issue of what people who are just “trying to get by” will do in order to stay alive… including being Jewish policeman in the ghetto. My first efforts to obtain a different vantage point on the Second World War, other than the one I was brought up on, as an American, that is, Pearl Harbor and D-Day, was reading Alexander Werth’s Russia at War: 1941-1945 , in the ‘60’s. William Shirer proclaimed it to be “the best book we probably shall ever have in English on Russia at war.” I found it strange therefore that in Snyder’s extensive 37 page bibliography, it is never mentioned. Of course, some of Werth’s information and opinions, as set forth in 1964, are outdated and have been superseded. For example, Werth had left it an open question as to who killed the Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, the Soviets or the Nazis. We now know for certain it was the former, and Snyder details this. I also compared accounts concerning the doomed Warsaw uprising of 1944. I found Snyder’s account less rigorous, with the implicit assumption that the Russians had simply stopped, for no particular reason, and allowed the Poles to be slaughter as a result. Werth seemed to be much more explicit and detailed, clearly condemning “…the awkward questions of the Moscow radio appeals at the end of July to the people of Warsaw to ‘rise’… and the Russian refusal to let supply planes from the West land on Soviet airfields.” Also, it was clearly in Stalin’s interest to allow the Polish elites again to be decimated. Nonetheless, Werth quotes the German general, Heinz Guderian on the inability of the Russians to take Warsaw, cites the failure to cross the Vistula in July, with a loss of 30 Russian tanks, and Werth concludes: “The only conclusion this author, at any rate, has been able to reach is that in August and September, 1944, the available Red Army forces in Poland were genuinely not able to capture Warsaw, which Hitler was determined to hold.” At a minimum, I think Snyder should have at least addressed this issue, and Werth’s knowledge of the matter. Despite the above one flaw, I consider this an essential historical work. 6-stars.

I would suggest taking a careful look at the Kindle edition of this book (the free sample) before ordering it: I downloaded the sample of this book and quickly discovered that the maps in the Kindle version were almost illegible. The book looked fascinating, and the maps are important, so I ordered the hardbound version instead. --------------------- I have now owned the hardbound edition of this book for a week or two, and, although the book is excellent in every way, my reading progress has been slow because the subject matter is both terrifying and depressing. So far, the book has demolished many of my hazy ideas about what happened in the Bloodlands. For example, I had a never-closely-examined "picture" of how Hitler killed six million Jews. That would be as follows: he rounded up the Jews living in Germany, took them to concentration camps like Auschwitz, and gassed them. We have all seen the film footage, which makes an indelible impression. It turns out that my "picture" is completely wrong. Germany simply did not have enough Jews, and a huge number escaped through emigration while it was still allowed. The total of German Jews killed was 175,000. That is (don't mistake my meaning) in itself an incomprehensible, enormous number, but it does not account for six million dead. What Hitler did, in fact, was to conquer Poland (with the connivance of Stalin) and begin massacring Polish and East European Jews. A huge number were simply shot and tossed into unmarked mass graves. There were also "killing camps" (NOT concentration camps) where the average "stay" was just a day or two, and the victims were gassed without any pretense of work whatsoever. One reason we Americans were slow in understanding the truth is that we (our troops) never even got to the Bloodlands, and so the massive crimes of Hitler and Stalin, amounting to 14 million dead, were simply things that we remained unaware of. I could recite the names of the monstrous killing camps and you most likely would not recognize them --- neither did I. What we remain ignorant of are horrendous crimes such as Stalin's collectivization drive in the Ukraine, which was an utter failure. Shortly after his wife committed suicide (with a bullet through her heart), Stalin became actively malicious towards the Ukraine, seizing all their grain and selling it abroad, and causing a famine which killed 3.3 million people. This is described in the chapter on "Class Terror." But then came the show trials and the Great Terror. This time, Stalin went after nationalities which he suspected --- Poles, Ukrainians, Belorussians -- and the Ukraine experienced a second wave of terror-murder, described in the chapter on "National Terror." All of this happened well before World War II, and all of this time Hitler was able to point to Stalin as a horrific example of Bolshevism ("Why You Should Vote for the Nazis"). Very soon, Hitler invaded Poland from the West, and Stalin (after a cautious pause) invaded from the East, and the stage was set for some of the worst crimes in human history. When you realize that Hitler, in annexing "his half" of Poland, had suddenly created a nation with more Slavs than any other nation in the world (aside from the USSR), and when you think of Hitler's lunatic insistence on "racial purity" --- in addition to his initial plan to steal the land of the Slavs, annihilate them, and populate the lands with German farmers --- a genuine shiver of terror runs down your back. This is a long overdue, magisterial work, which will be a very valuable source for students, teachers, and researchers in the future.

I am not a historian, but a reader who is trying to learn more about the history of one of the most seminal event of the century - World War II. So, I am writing from a point of view of an informed reader, but not a scholar of history. I learned an enormous amount from Snyder's book and highly recommend it to those who want to learn about a history that has been avoided in the prevailing narratives of World War II. This chilling, blood-curdling book is a tour de force. Employing a vast number of sources, many of which Snyder had to read in Polish - not an easy feat - Bloodlands successfully presents the vast scope of Hitler's and Stalin's extermination policies that resulted in the deaths of FOURTEEN MILLION INNOCENT LIVES. In comparing the two dictators' policies, he analyzes how they were alike and how they were different. Of course, in the final analysis, this is of academic interest, the outcome was the same: FOURTEEN MILLION INNOCENT PEOPLE LOST THEIR LIVES. One very important aspect to this book is that it exposes a history that has been woefully neglected by U.S. history books and historical accounts written by the victorious Allies. With the exception of some mention in Holocaust scholarship, U.S. attention is shamefully ignorant of the plight of non-Jewish peoples who lost their lives as a result of Stalin and Hitler's murderous policies. Hitler and Stalin were both mass-murderers and Professor Snyder makes this abundantly clear, although we already know this and it is not news to people who bother to read history. He also brings the deaths of those and the criminal behavior of the SS, NKVD, Wehrmacht, Gestapo and Soviet army to light. What is new is the light that he shines away from the Allies WW II narrative, which focuses so much of its attention on D-Day, Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, and makes heroes out of the French - who essentially collaborated with the Nazis. This narrative ignores the plight of the "eastern" Europeans: Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. From reading the hegemonic narrative written post WW II, one would scarcely know that these countries existed. I read a reviewer's comment that accuses Snyder of being too sympathetic to the Poles. Of course, I have a personal interest in Poles and their history, and I take umbrage to that remark, but it is interesting that the same reviewer did not accuse him of being too sympathetic to the Ukraines who were starved to death by Stalin's policies, or the Leningraders who were similarly starved under the relentless pounding of their city by the Wehmacht. How could anyone not be sympathetic to the plight of any of these groups who suffered so, and their suffering neglected by revisionist history? We should be grateful that the curtain is being lifted (many decades after Perestroika and the Solidarnosc movement in Poland) on the neglected history of the "bloodlands." We should applaud historians who are willing to put the effort into examining those archives and bringing that overlooked history to an English speaking audience. We should celebrate those scholars who can actually write that history, and write it in such an interesting and accessible manner. The book is not easy reading through no fault of Snyder's. He is a superb writer whose style is compelling and engaging. It is not easy reading because it is difficult to put one's mind around the fact that so many people were killed; that so many were tortured and suffered horribly. It is distressing that those lives were lost in the name of ideologies that were false and unsustainable, and further that those who perpetuated those mass slaughters are now allies and trading partners of the U.S. Perhaps that is the most depressing realization of all - and something of which we should be reminded on which we should reflect when we think of any war - the present adventures of the U.S. in "the stans" and Middle East included.

True or not, Joseph Stalin is often credited with stating: “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” That broadly applied quote certainly rings true when one factors how little value human life had in Eastern Europe between 1930 and 1953 (encompassing the crux of Stalin and Hitler’s reigns). With BLOODLANDS, Timothy Snyder sifts through millions upon millions of needless deaths at the hands of two bloodthirsty regimes and draws logical conclusions as to how and why the simple statistics often overshadow the underlying tragedy. The experience of reading “Black Earth” (Snyder’s most recent work) prompted me to go back and read BLOODLANDS; I was glad I did. While both books exemplify a deep, personal approach by the author to present the subject matter in a scholarly manner, I found “Black Earth” to be more provocative and ambitious than I would have preferred, with the author dragging the issue of “climate change” at the end of the book. BLOODLANDS, on the other hand, digs deep into the unimaginable horrors endured by those living in specific region of Europe. A region that, for 20+ years, served as a carcass that was ripped apart and fought over by two ravenous lions (Stalin and Hitler). What made BLOODLANDS such a compelling read? Mainly, it is the manner in which the author presents the material. After reading countless volumes addressing individual aspects of modern Eastern European history that includes Stalin’s purges, designed famine, World War II, ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust, I have yet to read a book that encompasses such a broad, yet thorough, analysis of the region that bore the brunt of all these tragedies. Snyder manages to examine the significant complexities associated with all these horrific events and merge them as one elongated period of suffering delivered by different hands. It is from this perspective that readers will better understand the more intricate nature of tragedy amid the gaudy death counts that characterize this period of time. Chronologically written, the book introduces the effects of Stalin’s failed attempts to industrialize the beleaguered Soviet Union by collectivizing farms and eventually starving, murdering or imprisoning entire rural regions. The death toll from famine and political purging is already in the millions before Adolph Hitler sets forth with his plans for Eastern Europe. Snyder bookends the disaster of World War II and the Holocaust with pre- and post-war actions directed by Stalin against his own people. Snyder purposefully makes it difficult to simply label either Stalin or Hitler as being “more evil” than the other … the book is too deep to draw such a simple conclusion. Starvation, mass murder, imprisonment and ethnic cleansing were tools used by both dictators to achieve desired goals and the mounting millions of dead simply became a tool of justification (you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs). What I really appreciated about BLOODLANDS was that it provided a clearer understanding of the dilemma faced by those living between Hitler and Stalin (the “bloodlands”) … approximately 100 million people comprising large ethnic groups deemed undesirable in one way or another. Subject to being successively occupied by the Soviets and the Germans (and in places like Poland, Belarus and the Ukraine … the Soviets again) there was nowhere to go … no escape. Collaborating with one occupier generally meant death when the other occupier gained/re-gained control. The desperation described by those put in this position is quite palpable and summed up quite succinctly in a poem written by a Polish Home Army soldier fighting the Germans in Warsaw and waiting for relief from the Red Army: “We await you, red plague / To deliver us from the black death”. This region was where the majority of all deaths on the Eastern Front occurred … it is the site of the Katyn massacre, the pits of Babi Yar, all of the extermination camps, the Jewish ghettos and thousands of villages/towns burned to the ground. The Holocaust has its place in the book, but only represents a part of the whole story. Snyder does a good job in keeping focus on the plight of the overall region, not just the Jews (although anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe doesn’t end with Germany’s defeat). The history presented throughout the book, while sobering enough, is accentuated with individual accounts that provide a deeper perspective of the ongoing inhumanity that this part of Europe endured for more than 20 years. The bulk of BLOODLANDS lends itself to the period of the Second World War, but, in essence the bloodshed didn’t start with the war and it doesn’t end with the war. Postwar Stalin directives led to many more deaths in the form of Gulag internments and forced relocations. Throughout the book, the death tolls from various actions (large and small) are hammered out on a regular basis and the reader is somewhat numbed by these figures from the beginning (they simply become statistics). At the book’s conclusion, Snyder examines the numbers and effectively manages to convey these statistics for what they truly are: millions of individual tragedies. He also offers clarification to the West, which tends to associate the concentration camps liberated in western Germany as examples of the killing in the East. He points out that concentration camps were never designed to kill and the deaths at those camps were more consequential than intentional … all the extermination camps were located in the “bloodlands”. BLOODLANDS is one of the better history books I’ve read in years. While I have numerous volumes that detail specific events in the same period of history, none of them collectively illustrate the misery and atrocity as concisely as this book does. BLOODLANDS certainly provides a much better understanding of one of the darkest and most misunderstood periods of the modern era.

It is somewhat obvious that since the Berlin Wall came down and the West has been able to access Soviet records of what the so-called communists under Stalin got up to domestically as well as what the Red Army found on their march to Berlin in WWII. New facts and new perspectives on the horrors of it all would emerge. And why not? What better way for the victims to be recognised and remembered? The innocents who have suffered because of the inbuilt ignorance and prejudice of the state proponents of hate. They deserve to have their story told and Snyder's naming of the some of the victims is more than just a sentimental literary device - it is a form of justice of which he should be proud and of which the reader should be mindful. And what better person to evaluate it all than a non-European such as Timothy Snyder? His gaze is unrelenting, his conclusions comprehensive as well as humane. Snyder's national objectivity is put to good use and is fair in its conclusions as he turns over the historical record. The sheer scale of human suffering - firstly explored under Stalin and then under Hitler from the years 1933 to 1945 - is simply staggering to the point of overwhelming. The people caught in the lands between Berlin and Moscow were subjected to what a can only be described as the ideological sausage machines dominating the West and East at the time. I have always been pro European but understood that Europe itself (Western to central Europe and right up to the Russian border) can be seen as one mass graveyard of human beings, of nations even. This is what has made the EU so important to me - I'd rather Europe be a place of fields of plenty for all (food) rather than killing fields as history points out to us it has been far too many times previously. It is also clear that the Europe before WWII was a place of inter-woven peoples that almost made the notion of statehood look somewhat ridiculous, even superfluous, artificial even. German speaking Czechs and Poles, Polish speaking Germans or Ukrainians - the sheer mixture of peoples and ethnicities (diversity) is staggering and thought provoking. It is nationalism itself that Snyder tells us is the culprit - nationalism is the unnatural, inhuman law at work here make no mistake about it. People will live where they can live - not where so-called leaders put imaginary lines on maps. They will speak the language they need to speak, till the good land that they can find and work with their neighbours to survive and worship their God as they see fit. To live and be happy. And then there are the Jews. Today Poland is seen as a Roman Catholic country but I had no idea that before WWII Poland was a major Jewish settlement - a centre for Jewry in Europe. Incredible to think when you look at it now. And as for Poland - it needs and deserves a thorough account of what happened during these times caught between these two titanic forces - Nazism and Soviet style cod communism. And now as others have noted (Keith Lowe in 'The Fear & the Freedom' or E.M Douglas 'Orderly and Humane' for example) we actually have less ethnic diversity (heterogeneity) in Europe and more homogeneous populations that seem ripe and easy prey for excessive and dangerous nationalism in countries that are now under pressure from migrants from Africa and the near East. It's a heady brew - basically both Hitler and Stalin somehow live on in Europe in the scars created by the nations left behind by their polices after the conflict subsided. Did it ever really end? Perhaps not - perhaps we Europeans even now are walking with tigers? But how well do we understand this? Snyder is philosophical about this and sets an example of what we should be thinking when confronted with evaluating the likes of Hitler and Stalin. He repudiates revenge and an eye for an eye and says instead (p. 400): 'To yield to this temptation, to find other people to be inhuman, is to take a step toward not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history.' Indeed. That is where we need to start with the most basic and simple question when confronted by potentially destructive ideology: Why? Highly recommended without reservation.

Timothy Snyder beschreibt akribisch und nüchtern wie zunächst der sowjetische Bolschewismus, danach der nationale Sozialismus und zuletzt wieder der sowjetische Bolschewismus (nunmehr geronnen zu einer Art bizarrem Nationalbolschewismus) die Bloodlands, Länder und Gebiete östlich der Grenzen des Deutschen Reiches von 1938 und westlich der Linie Leningrad-Smolensk-Rostow am Don, nachhaltig zerstört haben. Die verstörenden Details hierzu sind im Werk selbst nachzulesen und brauchen an dieser Stelle nicht repetiert zu werden. Auf der Metaebene protokolliert Snyder das Zeitalter der Ideologien, den Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts, das im Ringen um ideologische und territoriale Vorherrschaft zwischen der marxistisch-leninistisch-stalinistischen klassistischen Variante des Sozialismus und der rassistisch-faschistischen nationalsozialistischen Variante des Sozialismus seinen tödlichen Gipfelpunkt fand. Die Verschränkung zwischen Bolschewismus und Nationalsozialismus tritt deutlich hervor, ebenso die Art- und Wahlverwandtschaft zwischen beiden, der allmählichen Anverwandlung des Anderen im jeweils eigenen und der daraus resultierenden Eskalation an Gewalt, Völkermord und Vertreibung. Die sowjetischen Morde, die geplanten Hungersnöte, die Konzentrationslager, die Vertreibungen und ethnischen Säuberungen gingen jenen der Nationalsozialisten vor, bildeten aber auch den Referenzrahmen für nationalsozialistisches Handeln. Die "antibolschewistischen Bolschewisten" (Zitat: Joseph Goebbels) waren gelehrige Schüler ihrer bolschewistischen Todfeinde und Lehrmeister. Wo der Bolschewismus Klassenfeinde vernichtete (und zunehmend Klassenfeinde mit ganzen Nationalitäten gleichsetzte, siehe "Polenaktion", "Ukraineaktion" und Säuberungen in den besetzten baltischen Staaten), wollte der Nationalsozialismus die Rassenfeinde der Arier vernichten, die er zugleich als Träger des bolschewistischen Virus ansah, die Juden. Im nationalsozialistischen Ansatz verschränkten sich Rassenhass mit Klassenhass (das Ziehen der Goldzähne, die Ausplünderung der Juden vor ihrer Ermordung und der Umverteilung dieses Wohlstandes an bedürftige Volksgenossen, sind Tatsachen des Klassenhasses, s.a. Götz Aly, Volksstaat), der zunächst gar nicht exterminatorisch war, sondern anglehnt an das bolschewistische Vorbild, Vertreibung der Juden nach Sibirien oder Madagaskar vorsah. Mörderisch wurde die angedachte Endlösung erst als im Winter 1941 klar wurde, dass der Weltanschauungskrieg im Osten zuungunsten der nationalsozialistischen Variante beendet würde. Zumindest der Krieg gegen den Rassen- und Klassenfeind sollte dann noch gewonnen werden. Wo NKWD (direkter Vorläufer des KGB und heutigen FSB), flankiert von wohlwollenden und sympathisierenden westlichen Literaten und Journalisten, leidlich klandestin Verschleppungen, Ermordungen und Konzentrationslager betreiben konnte, blieben diese Privilegien dem Nationalsozialismus von vornherein verschlossen und so steigerte sich das nationalsozialistische Morden hin zu einem Crescendo einer Symphonie des Grauens 1944 nach dem Warschauer Aufstand. Die Erzählung an dieser Stelle evoziert Bilder eines Hieronymus Bosch, dessen Teufel in Gestalt der Mörder, Vergewaltiger, Diebe und Geistesgestörten der SS-Sonderbrigade Dirlewanger ihre Widergänger fanden. Das Ringen der verschränkten Ideologien fand seinen Höhepunkt in einem unwirklichen, satanischen, perversen Karneval der Gewalt. "Befreit" wurde von der Roten Armee anschließend niemand, außer vielleicht ein paar Juden in den übriggebliebenen Konzentrationslagern. Für die Übrigen gingen die Verschleppungen, Vertreibungen und Morde unter anderen Vorzeichen, wenn auch vermindert, weiter. Das Feuer der großen ideologischen Auseinandersetzung sollte noch bis Anfang der 1950er Jahre glimmen und in einer perversen aber folgerichtigen imitatio, eignete sich das nun zum Nationalkommunismus gewendete stalinistische Regime Kernpunkte der nationalsozialistsichen Ideologie an. Die Juden wurden im sog. Ostblock ab 1948 wie einst unter Hitler als unzuverlässige, zersetzende Elemente und "Kosmopoliten" geschmäht; eine anti-semitische Kampagne nach der Vorlage des Großen Terror 1937-38, eine "Judenaktion", zeichnete sich bereits am Horizont ab - nur der Tod Stalins ließ es nicht zum Äußersten kommen. Die Sowjetunion hatte das Ringen für sich entschieden, aber sie hatte den Nationalsozialismus buchstäblich verschlungen und ihre eigene DNA mit der des NS vermischt. Eine kapitalistische Sowjetunion war stets undenkbar gewesen, aber eine Sowjetunion erweitert um nationalsozialistische Elemente nicht; das ist die Wahlverwandtschaft aller sozialistischen Varianten und Häresien. Snyder bestätigt nicht die These Ernst Noltes vom Kausalen Nexus, für welche Letzterer 1985 von der linken deutschen Haute Volée gecancelt wurde, wie man heute sagen würde, aber er widerlegt sie auch nicht. Beide Ideologien führen ihre Wurzeln auf den Sozialismus zurück, beide haben sich verschränkt, bekämpft und von Vernichtungswillen getrieben einander anverwandelt. Der Bolschewismus kam zuerst, der Nationalsozialismus ahmte nach, überflügelte dann, wurde zerschmettert; der Bolschewismus blieb übrig, aber verwandelt da auch er nachahmte und anverwandelte. Das ist sozialistische Dialektik im Weltmaßstab und das hat Nolte nicht gesehen, Snyder aber durchaus. Dies relativiert nicht den Holocaust, aber es historisiert ihn, setzt ihn in Beziehung als eine Funktion einer gescheiterten sozialistischen Utopie die sich gegenüber einer anders gelagerten sozialistischen Utopie nicht durchzusetzen vermochte. Das Schicksal der Juden war allen egal. Sowjets, Engländer und Amerikaner wussten von der Vernichtungstaten der deutschen Nationalsozialisten aber es spielte keine Rolle in einem Ringen in dem es um Vorherrschaft ging. Und so saßen denn in Nürnberg, Mordbrenner, Massenmörder, die Architekten ethnischer Säuberungen und (im Falle der Sowjets, die Betreiber von Konzentrationslagern) über Mordbrenner, Massenmörder, Architekten ethnischer Säuberungen und Betreiber von Konzentrationslagern zu Gericht. Dir Urteile von Nürnberg die in der Erinnerungspolitk der BRD den Rang von Gottesurteilen einnehmen, erscheinen als eine Farce von Justiz und die in Nürnberg aufgestellten Grundsätze sind heuchlerisch als sie nicht auch gegen diejenigen angewandt wurden - und werden - die nicht wehrlos waren bzw. sind. Göring et. al. hatten nur das Pech das Ringen um Vorherrschaft verloren zu haben. Snyders Werk ist ein revisionistisches Werk und daraus erklärt sich wohl auch die kühle Aufnahme die dieses Buch in Deutschland gefunden hat. Revisionismus ist in Deutschland von tonangebenden Eliten (die allesamt bolschewistische Vergangenheiten und anhaltende Sympathien haben) negativ konnotiert worden. Dabei ist Revision lediglich das Fortschreiten der Geschichtswissenschaft. Die Einordnung von neuen Erkenntnissen in einen historisch-sozialen Kontext. Die Revision des Zeitalters der Ideologien ist noch lange nicht abgeschlossen und die auf den post-Nürnberg blühenden Mythen und ihren eigenen Geschichtslügen aufbauende Bundesrepublik erscheint zunehmend unglaubwürdig in ihrem Beharren auf ahistorische Schuldbezeugungen und der Einzigartigkeit des den Deutschen innewohnenden All-Bösen. Diese Lügen könnten sich noch als Stolperstein des "besten Deutschlands aller Zeiten" erweisen.

I purchased this book (quite old now) after striking its author on YouTube. He extensively documents the suffering of large populations in Poland, (then Soviet) Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states during the period between the two World Wars and just afterwards. The detail is at times a little dry and almost boring, until one reminds oneself that these figures represents millions of individuals, rather than a mass of people that can be ignored. As Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, one million a statistic (not a direct quote), and he ought to have known, given how many of the deaths he was directly responsible for. Snyder attempts throughout his narrative to prevent this tendency by introducing vignettes of individuals whose voice has been preserved beyond their deaths by a variety of methods; a diary entry, witness testimony, final messages scratched on walls etc. Some of these were very affecting, and in several places I was on the point of weeping. All in all, this is a difficult read due to subject matter, but not due to style; any intelligent non-specialist would be able to follow the arguments and also follow the citations. Not all of these are readily available, but such as I have checked, are accurate. I was generally aware of the history of the area, but this book has deepened my understanding and introduced me to some things of which I was either unaware or had misunderstood. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

The only flaw in this book (it might be a flaw) is the crushing preponderance of data in detail. It is challenging to absorb the detailed description of cold-hearted murders and betrayals and detailed enumeration of inhumanity. I found it emotionally draining and could not read much of it at each sitting. The story is so riveting, the truth so well documented, the humanity so utterly demanding that I felt compelled to continue to completion. The parallels between Hitler, Stalin and Putin are so stark, horrifying and undeniable that I feel sick to my stomach even reviewing this book. My only regret is that most of the people who really need to understand this history will not read the book, authoritative though it is.

És una part de la història d'Europa que tothom hauria de coneixer, sobretot els que ara per Catalunya i Espanya creuen que els totalitarismes són "noves formes politiques"