Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a professor of history Timothy Snyder has written extensively on authoritarian and totalitarian movements in the twentieth century. The Road to Unfreedom is one of his briefer works, but an extremely important one nonetheless. Snyder's most important contribution to the growing set of volumes analyzing why the 2016 US Presidential election went so catastrophically wrong is to set the events of that year in their proper historical context, reminding us once again that history not only repeats itself, it sometimes whacks us over the head and screams "Why didn't you pay attention?" Snyder spends the first section of his book detailing the differences between the politics of inevitability, in which progress is believed to be unstoppable and democracy and capitalism the certain future for all; and the politics of eternity, in which progress is temporary and history is cyclical, favoring elites and abandoning any concern for the masses. He identifies the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin as a high priest of the politics of eternity. An anti-Bolshevik who was exiled from Soviet Russia in 1922, Ilyin called for a Fascist counter-revolution and portrayed Russia as the innocent victim of foreign intriguers. Although Ilyin died in the 1950s his writings were to have enormous influence on the Russian politicians of the 2010s who oversaw their country's descent into kleptocracy, including Vladimir Putin himself. It was thanks to Ilyin's influence that Putin took steps to destabilize the regions he perceived to be Russia's enemies, primarily the European Union and the United States. Snyder spends a great deal of time detailing the events of 2014-15 in Ukraine, which the Russians invaded while denying they were doing so, spreading confusion with the assistance of the government-controlled Russian media as well as more reputable Western outlets like the Guardian and the Nation. I found these chapters most eye-opening because like most Westerners I remember being extremely confused over what exactly was taking place between Ukraine and Russia. As I read, I realized that in many respects what happened to Ukraine in 2014 was a practice round for what was to occur in the European Union and the United States in 2016. Snyder goes on to expose Russian efforts to influence the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the United States. Much of his material here has already been covered, but it's still important to reread it and be forewarned for the future. As I read, I found my memory returning again and again to an old TV mini-series from the 1980s called "Amerika," about a Soviet takeover of the United States. Reading of Kremlin conspiracies and conversations between Russian oligarchs and their European and American stooges making plans to defeat the West I realized that that old series has actually come to fruition thirty years after its broadcast. The Road to Unfreedom ends bleakly, though the last lines from the epilogue does allow some hope: "If we see history as it is, we see our places in it, what we might change, and how we might do better. We halt our thoughtless journey from inevitability to eternity, and exit the road to unfreedom. We begin a politics of responsibility. To take part in its creation is to see a world for a second time. Students of the virtues that history reveals, we become the makers of a renewal that no one can foresee." This is a brief work of less than 300 pages followed by an extensive End notes section. It is one of the most important works concerned Americans and Europeans can read in 2018.