Timothy Snyder, The Making of Modern Ukraine, Lecture #17: Reform, Recentralization, Dissidence: 1950s — 1970s
For those who are not familiar with Timothy Snyder, he 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, including both Ukrainian and Russian.
His book, “Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin,” which I highly recommend, is not only meticulously researched, it is essential reading for a complete understanding of WWII as well as Europe today.
I have undertaken to summarize all of Snyder’s lectures. I am also following along in the reading (see syllabus link below), which has not only been enlightening, but enjoyable. As always, my summaries are meant to be a guide, rather than a substitution for Snyder’s lectures.
I’ve just finished watching Timothy Snyder’s 17th lecture for his course, The Making of Modern Ukraine. This lecture was entitled, “Reform, Recentralization, Dissidence: 1950s — 1970s.” But Snyder decided not to cover that topic, because he wasn’t finished with the 1940s. Specifically, he wanted to talk about the ethnic cleansings in Eastern Europe (where there were several ethnic cleansings — Poles, Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews) and the formation of the post-WWII Soviet myth of Russia.
Ethnic cleansing, in the form of mass murder, was an essential part of Nazi Germany’s attempt at defining an ethnic national self-definition. Their self-definition did not include anyone who wasn’t “Aryan.” It also didn’t include non-Aryans in any territory that Germany wanted for its “lebensraum” (expansion). Non-Aryans would have to be eliminated in those areas in order to create a “German Utopia.”
Ethnic cleansing was also an important part of Stalin’s proposed national self-definition, which identified Russians as being the only legitimate inhabitants of the territory he defined as “Russia,” including eastern Poland, Belarussia, Ukraine, and all of the far eastern territories occupied by the USSR. Under Stalin, ethnic cleansing was carried out by starvation and mass deportations, which were equally as devastating, if not more so, to the population as Nazi Germany’s extermination policies had been.
Snyder made the important point that colonialism tends to forget itself. The USSR, no less than the European powers and the US, was a colonial power. And like Europe and America, Russia reformulated its national myth in the context of WWII, conveniently forgetting its role as a colonizer. (Europe completely forgot that it was composed of colonial powers when it redefined itself as one big happy family. And the US has never defined itself as a colonial power — despite several wars that enlarged its territorial control — so there was nothing to forget.) The Soviet national myth arising from WWII was that through the “steadfastness and patience” of Russians, Nazis were defeated. In fact, Ukrainian losses were more than the UK, France, Russia, and the US combined. (The Eastern front was largely in Belarussia and Ukraine.) Up to 14 million Ukrainians were killed during WWII.
(As an aside, when I was studying Soviet Russian history, my professor taught us Stalin’s myth, which I believed until I read Snyder’s book, “Bloodlands.” The only way to accept Stalin’s narrative of Russia’s monumental losses during WWII is if you define Ukrainians as Russians, which Ukrainians didn’t.)
How does all of this relate to Ukraine? It has to do with the bad memory of colonizers. The way colonizers (Germany and Russia in this case) forget they are colonizers, is that first they deny the independent existence of the places they colonize. (It’s just “unclaimed territory.”) And then they exterminate the people in those territories, either through ethnic cleansing, mass murder, or cultural oppression.
Inevitably, once a colonizer’s national self-identity is defined as a single culture, all the other “sub-cultures” must be suppressed. In the case of Ukraine, it had to be defined as “historically part of Russia” to make it a sub-culture of Russia. This was the Soviet argument for subsuming Ukraine in the 1940s (which was done both quietly and violently), and it is Putin’s justification now for his invasion.
I’d like to add a final comment to Snyder’s lecture. When a national identity defines itself as a single culture or ethnicity, the oppression of all groups that don’t fit into that category is inevitable. And because all nations encompass many cultures and ethnic groups, oppression on a large scale is required to maintain the mythological self-identity. We should keep that in mind as we witness the rise of white nationalism in the US.
You can watch the 17th lecture for The Making of Modern Ukraine here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRdNxx295r8
The syllabus for the course is here: https://snyder.substack.com/p/syllabus-of-my-ukraine-lecture-class
You can watch all of Timothy Snyder’s lectures for The Making of Modern Ukraine here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_
You can read my summaries of his lectures here: https://ericaverr.medium.com/
Erica Verrillo is the author of the Phoenix Rising Trilogy (Random House). Her short work has appeared in over a dozen publications. She is also the author of the definitive reference guide for treating myalgic encephalomyelitis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Treatment Guide, now in its second edition (first edition, St. Martin’s). She holds degrees from Tufts University (BA — History) and Syracuse University (MA — Linguistics) as well as doctoral work in Linguistics, Anthropology, and Speech Communication. Her professional life includes: Spanish language editor for the journal Mesoamerica, linguistics instructor (Dartmouth), Spanish and ESL instructor (Syracuse University), classical musician (Oxford Symphony Orchestra), Mayan linguist (SUNY Albany), and director of a non-profit NGO for Mayan refugees. She is the president of the American Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to to serving the needs of patients and caregivers through support, advocacy, and education. Her writing blog, Publishing … and Other Forms of Insanity, has received nearly 8 million page views. You are welcome to visit.
