Timothy Snyder

Our Own Reichstag Fire Moment

The Yale historian and author of Bloodlands and On Tyranny reflects on how this crisis of democracy measures up with the past.

What Ails America

Although I did not understand this then, I had a severe infection in my liver. I was in a condition known as sepsis; death was close.

On Holocaust Analogies

The Museum’s decision to completely reject drawing any possible analogies to the Holocaust, or to the events leading up to it, is fundamentally ahistorical. It makes learning from the past almost impossible.

The Digital Threat to a Human Future

When the unpredictable truth of humans is banished by machine intelligence, what passes for the good of mankind is optimization, the replacement of an open society with a hamster wheel. Humans have set loose the unthinking beings that do not so much outwit us as unwit us.

Ilyin, Philosopher of Russian Fascism

Ivan Ilyin provided a metaphysical and moral justification for political totalitarianism, which he expressed in practical outlines for a fascist state. Today, his ideas have been revived and celebrated by Vladimir Putin.

God Is a Russian

The Reichstag Warning

The Reichstag fire shows how quickly a modern republic can be transformed into an authoritarian regime.

The Wars of Vladimir Putin

The new Russian wars are a Bonapartism without a Napoleon

Poland vs. History

The preemptive liquidation of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, Poland, is nothing less than a violent blow to the world’s cultural heritage.

Trump’s Putin Fantasy

Few foreign leaders seem enthusiastic about the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency. But there is one who should be pleased: Vladimir Putin. Or so Trump seems to think.

Alexievich's Anti-Nostalgia

The central attainment of Svetlana Alexievich, this year’s laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is the recovery of Soviet experience from myth; it has made her an acute critic of the nostalgic dictatorships in Belarus and Russia.

Hitler’s World

“Nature,” he wrote, “knows no political boundaries.”

On Europe's Edge

The clearest expression of the idea of Europe can be found in eastern Ukraine.

Putin’s New Nostalgia

In speaking of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as good foreign policy, Russian President Vladimir Putin has violated both a long Soviet taboo and revised his own prior position that the agreement was “immoral.”

Solving European Fascism

The European left has a real problem, and it is not the Ukrainian far right. It is the European far right, which happens to be popular, and is supported by the Russian far right, which happens to be in power in Moscow.

Democracy's Eastern Edge

The Ukrainian presidential election marks the eastern boundary of European democracy, which is why it is so threatening for the Putin regime in Moscow.

Crimea: Putin vs. Reality

Putin’s invasion was not a reaction to an actual threat, but rather an attempt to activate a threat so that violence would erupt that would change the world.

The Haze of Propaganda

From Moscow to London to New York, the Ukrainian revolution has been seen through a haze of propaganda.

Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine

Ukraine: The New Dictatorship