True or not, Joseph Stalin is often credited with stating: “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” That broadly applied quote certainly rings true when one factors how little value human life had in Eastern Europe between 1930 and 1953 (encompassing the crux of Stalin and Hitler’s reigns). With BLOODLANDS, Timothy Snyder sifts through millions upon millions of needless deaths at the hands of two bloodthirsty regimes and draws logical conclusions as to how and why the simple statistics often overshadow the underlying tragedy.
The experience of reading “Black Earth” (Snyder’s most recent work) prompted me to go back and read BLOODLANDS; I was glad I did. While both books exemplify a deep, personal approach by the author to present the subject matter in a scholarly manner, I found “Black Earth” to be more provocative and ambitious than I would have preferred, with the author dragging the issue of “climate change” at the end of the book. BLOODLANDS, on the other hand, digs deep into the unimaginable horrors endured by those living in specific region of Europe. A region that, for 20+ years, served as a carcass that was ripped apart and fought over by two ravenous lions (Stalin and Hitler).
What made BLOODLANDS such a compelling read? Mainly, it is the manner in which the author presents the material. After reading countless volumes addressing individual aspects of modern Eastern European history that includes Stalin’s purges, designed famine, World War II, ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust, I have yet to read a book that encompasses such a broad, yet thorough, analysis of the region that bore the brunt of all these tragedies. Snyder manages to examine the significant complexities associated with all these horrific events and merge them as one elongated period of suffering delivered by different hands. It is from this perspective that readers will better understand the more intricate nature of tragedy amid the gaudy death counts that characterize this period of time. Chronologically written, the book introduces the effects of Stalin’s failed attempts to industrialize the beleaguered Soviet Union by collectivizing farms and eventually starving, murdering or imprisoning entire rural regions. The death toll from famine and political purging is already in the millions before Adolph Hitler sets forth with his plans for Eastern Europe. Snyder bookends the disaster of World War II and the Holocaust with pre- and post-war actions directed by Stalin against his own people. Snyder purposefully makes it difficult to simply label either Stalin or Hitler as being “more evil” than the other … the book is too deep to draw such a simple conclusion. Starvation, mass murder, imprisonment and ethnic cleansing were tools used by both dictators to achieve desired goals and the mounting millions of dead simply became a tool of justification (you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs).
What I really appreciated about BLOODLANDS was that it provided a clearer understanding of the dilemma faced by those living between Hitler and Stalin (the “bloodlands”) … approximately 100 million people comprising large ethnic groups deemed undesirable in one way or another. Subject to being successively occupied by the Soviets and the Germans (and in places like Poland, Belarus and the Ukraine … the Soviets again) there was nowhere to go … no escape. Collaborating with one occupier generally meant death when the other occupier gained/re-gained control. The desperation described by those put in this position is quite palpable and summed up quite succinctly in a poem written by a Polish Home Army soldier fighting the Germans in Warsaw and waiting for relief from the Red Army: “We await you, red plague / To deliver us from the black death”. This region was where the majority of all deaths on the Eastern Front occurred … it is the site of the Katyn massacre, the pits of Babi Yar, all of the extermination camps, the Jewish ghettos and thousands of villages/towns burned to the ground. The Holocaust has its place in the book, but only represents a part of the whole story. Snyder does a good job in keeping focus on the plight of the overall region, not just the Jews (although anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe doesn’t end with Germany’s defeat). The history presented throughout the book, while sobering enough, is accentuated with individual accounts that provide a deeper perspective of the ongoing inhumanity that this part of Europe endured for more than 20 years.
The bulk of BLOODLANDS lends itself to the period of the Second World War, but, in essence the bloodshed didn’t start with the war and it doesn’t end with the war. Postwar Stalin directives led to many more deaths in the form of Gulag internments and forced relocations. Throughout the book, the death tolls from various actions (large and small) are hammered out on a regular basis and the reader is somewhat numbed by these figures from the beginning (they simply become statistics). At the book’s conclusion, Snyder examines the numbers and effectively manages to convey these statistics for what they truly are: millions of individual tragedies. He also offers clarification to the West, which tends to associate the concentration camps liberated in western Germany as examples of the killing in the East. He points out that concentration camps were never designed to kill and the deaths at those camps were more consequential than intentional … all the extermination camps were located in the “bloodlands”.
BLOODLANDS is one of the better history books I’ve read in years. While I have numerous volumes that detail specific events in the same period of history, none of them collectively illustrate the misery and atrocity as concisely as this book does. BLOODLANDS certainly provides a much better understanding of one of the darkest and most misunderstood periods of the modern era.
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Of the fourteen million civilians and prisoners of war killed in the bloodlands between 1933 and 1945, more than half died because they were denied food.Highlighted by 209 Kindle readers- For both Hitler and Stalin, Ukraine was more than a source of food. It was the place that would enable them to break the rules of traditional economics, rescue their countries from poverty and isolation, and remake the continent in their own image.Highlighted by 201 Kindle readers
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Unreadable due to small print, even with reading glasses
This review is NOT a review of the book itself. My friends highly recommended it. I ordered it for my husband’s birthday. We both looked forward to reading it. Our eyes are not young eyes but even if they were, this would be a difficult read due to the very small size of the print. There is a large amount of wasted, empty, unfilled page surrounding a small block of print. Even with reading glasses, it was a struggle to read. And I don’t usually need reading glasses. I’ve attached photos. The first is a photo of a page from the book Bloodlands as sent by this seller. The second photo compares the book Bloodlands next to another book of the same size with normal size print. I’m thinking perhaps there was a mistake made in printing. If so, I’d be happy to take a replacement and adjust my review accordingly. I’ve returned the book. I hope the seller will contact me if there was an error in printing.
Top reviews from other countries
Jimeet Gandhi
Appalling and fascinating piece of history
Reviewed in India on July 1, 2021
