Timothy Snyder, The Making of Modern Ukraine, Lecture #18: Before and After the End of History
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 18th lecture for his course, The Making of Modern Ukraine. This lecture was called “Before and After the End of History.” The subject was time.
“The End of History” is an essay by Francis Fukuyama, an American political scientist. Fukuyama argues that with the ascension of liberal Western democracy, the linear progression of human political ideology has reached an endpoint. This is largely in keeping with Marxian socio-political theory, in which every society goes through distinct stages in a step-wise, inevitable progression.
The idea that history has come to an end is wishful thinking on the part of politicial scientists who cannot bear a mess. Political development (aka history) is not only messy, it is wildly unpredictable — except in retrospect. Yet, it is the project of many (if not all) nations to construct a narrative in which the nation began, met challenges from the outside, and then ceased to evolve into anything other than what it currently is today. (This is what Snyder means by the “end of history.”)
As far as its relationship to Russia is concerned, the notion that Ukraine has “always” been tied to Russia has been the basis, not just for the end of Ukraine’s history, but for the end of Russia’s history, of which Ukraine has been an integral part.
Some background will be helpful here. After Stalin remade Russia’s economic and political structure in the 1930s and 40s, Russia, in its transformation as the USSR, reached the “end” of its development within Marxian theory. With the country industrialized, and the farms collectivized, what more was there to do? The answer lay in the past, specifically in 1654, when the Ukrainian Cossacks pledged fealty to Tsar Alexis. It was a marriage of convenience, rather than love, because the Cossacks were merely using the Russian Empire as an ally in their uprising against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
But because Soviet history had “ended” with Stalin, Krushchev used the 1654 agreement between the Cossacks and the tsar to solidify another myth — that Ukraine had “always” been part of Russia. (In fact, the Cossacks often switched sides, playing one empire against another.) So in 1954, thousands of consumer goods were made with the number “300” printed on them to celebrate the “historic” connection between Ukraine and Russia, thus imprinting that connection on the minds of Russians in the form of the clothing they wore. Ukraine’s history came to an end.
Importantly, Crimea’s history also came to an “end” that year. After Stalin’s expulsion of every single Tatar from Crimea in 1944, the peninsula was redefined. It was now Russia, despite the fact that it had been the Crimean Khanate, and Muslim, for 600 years. All trace of those centuries was removed, the place names changed, and the Tatars forbidden from returning.
Then, in what has been erroneously interpreted as an act of magnanimity, Krushchev “gave” Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. (It was actually a purely administrative move.) Crimea was subsequently established as “always” Russian, because that was the year that Ukraine had also been defined as historically “part” of Russia. By 1954, the USSR had now secured for itself the naval bases of Crimea, as well as the industrialized Ukrainian Donbas, plus the shipping lanes it would need for exporting Ukrainian grain. And that reshuffling was etched into the minds of Russians, who would never see those regions as anything but Russian, forever.
As Snyder points out, nations and empires are not forever. The European empires fell. The Russian Empire did as well, as did its heir, the Soviet empire. And now its grandchild, the Russian Federation, is undergoing a transformation because of Putin’s disastrous invasion. (Wars typically mark both the begining and end of empires. First wars are won, bolstering the formation of the empire, and then they are lost, signalling its dissolution.) The question is, now that we know history does not end, what will come after empires and nations? What next?
Historically, all empires have ended in bankruptcy. And given the propensity of the insanely (I mean that literally) wealthy to drive their corporations and businesses into ruin, stripping their assets for immediate personal gain at the expense of long-term stability, we can expect no less from those mad oligarchs if oligarchy-run authoritarian puppet states are what come next.
You can watch the 18th lecture for The Making of Modern Ukraine here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7nM9SetN50
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.
