The Modern History in Works by Timothy Snyder

Abstract

American Sovietology was formed in the years of the “Cold War” as science, which methodologically aimed at showing the totalitarian character of power structures in the Soviet Union. The image of the enemy in politics was accompanied by an equally negative image of scientific research, first carried out by political analysts and then by historians. Several decades have passed, but much of what was practiced in the 1950s and 1960s remains important and relevant at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The astute manipulation of facts and events is still going on. In this regard, writings by the professor of history of Yale University Timothy Snyder can provide a good example. Snyder is the author of two famous books translated into Russian: “The Reconstruction of Nations” (2003) and “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin” (2010). His third work, “The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America,” dedicated to contemporary history from 2010, was published in 2018 by Yale University Press. While the issues and historical periods are outwardly different, all three books reveal one central idea: Russia’s history is the history of Russian fascism. Over the years, only the manifestation of fascism has changed, while its basic characteristics have remained unchanged: an expansionistic foreign policy in Europe, and currently in America as well, and on former Soviet territories. This inevitably transfers Snyder’s works from the properly historical sphere to the field of the historical politics and political studies.