The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

Fantastic book. It went way beyond what I expected and provides deep insights into Putin‘s Russia. Prof Snyder is as ever insightful and showcases how a historian can analyse the most recent past.

Timothy Snyder, a polyglot including several Slavic languages, commands a lateral perceptiveness that greatly enhances his power of judgement in contemporary history. However, his inclination to coin novel labels for ideological interpretations of history is more of a distraction. What is the added conceptual insight of summing up both communism and neo-liberalism under the label of “the politics of inevitability”? History, as we have learned, is contingent. It certainly shows patterns, but nobody knows what will happen three months, three years or thirty years from now. And, of course, autocrats will always try to clad their rule in a mantle of permanence. But why award the compliment of “the politics of eternity” to authoritarian presumptuousness? And why choose the squelchy title “The Road to Unfreedom” for a book that is meant to exhort its readers to confidently heed the political virtues of individual responsibility, fact-based truthfulness and justice?So one has to plough through repetitions of triteness before one gets to the gems. What are these?Snyder presents a comprehensive narrative according to which Putin, greatly annoyed by Ukraine’s turn towards Europe, but conscious that Russia’s economic and military might will not suffice to stem the tide, opted for a new strategy of systematic subversion by stealth and deceit in order to weaken, destabilize and confuse an adversary that he could not overcome in open confrontation. At the same time he portrays himself to his people as the savior of innocent, pure, victimized Russia from the decadent, materialistic, obscene influences of Western civilization. The works of Ivan Iljin, a nationalist, religious writer who was exiled by Stalin, provide the ideological underpinnings, adapted to the world of modern media by Putin’s propaganda master Vladislav Surkov who is also orchestrating subversive strategies in the Western media. This is an utterly thrilling background story packed with anecdotes, hints and circumstantial evidence – including the ensnaring of Donald Trump after his 2004 bankruptcy. What is forensically relevant in all of this is will be fully revealed in its own time by special investigator Robert Mueller.