I read the book entitled: “The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America” by Timothy Snyder after reading Snyder’s book entitled: “On Tyranny” which was an informative easy read but little more than a pamphlet. By contrast this is a deep scholarly work of the type expected by a history professor and for the non-historian it is at times is a bit dry and provides more details and information than one might like from a book that is or should be a widely read popular one. I for one think a wider audience might be found by a releasing a “dumbed-down” version co-authored in conjunction with, say, one of his students, leaving out half of the material. As it stands the book contains a treasure trove of information about Ukraine, Europe and Russia and their evolution over several centuries complete with extensive end note references. The book is well worth purchasing and reading but be forewarned, it not a light read nor does it shy away from showing how Russians helped Trump in his 2016 run for the U.S. Presidency.
Snyder states: “As Russia’s neighbor Ukraine drew closer to the European Union, Russia invaded the country and annexed some of its territory in 2014. By 2015, Russia had extended an extraordinary campaign of cyberwarfare beyond Ukraine to Europe and the United States, with the assistance of numerous Europeans and Americans.” He goes on to write: “This book is an attempt to win back the present for historical time, and thus to win back historical time for politics. … Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was a reality test for the European Union and the United States. Many Europeans and Americans found it easier to follow Russia’s propaganda phantoms than to defend a legal order.” Interestingly, the author finds this quotation: “History has proven that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government, are transient. Only democratic systems are intransient.—VLADIMIR PUTIN, 1999”
Snyder reminds the reader that: “In 2004 and 2007, seven post-communist states (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia) and three former Soviet republics (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) joined the European Union. … The politics of integration were fundamentally different from the politics of empire. The EU was like an empire in that it was a large economic space. It was unlike an empire in that its organizing principle was equality rather than inequality.” The author reports that: “… In April 2007, Estonia was crippled for weeks in a major cyberattack. Although the event was confusing at the time, it was later understood to be the first salvo in a Russian cyberwar against Europe and the United States.”
To help explain the rationality, or lack thereof, of Russian views, Snyder states: “Gumilev’s contribution to Eurasianism was his theory of ethnogenesis: an explanation of how nations arise. … According to Gumilev, the genesis of each nation could therefore be traced to a burst of cosmic energy, which began a cycle that lasted for more than a thousand years. … Gumilev also added a specific form of antisemitism to the Eurasian tradition, one that enabled Russians to blame their own failings on the Jews and the West at the same time.” And moreover, “Dugin, born half a century after Gumilev, … According to Dugin, the annexation of Ukrainian territory by Russia was the “necessary condition” of the Eurasian imperial project.
In terms of whether the Russians should become more like the European Union (EU) or the EU should merge into the Russian construct of Eurasianism, Snyder provides this insight: “Glazyev did not discuss the preferences of the people who lived in the European Union. Did Europeans really need to discover firsthand the profundity of a Russian system where life expectancy in 2012 was 111th in the world, where the police could not be trusted, bribes and blackmail were the stuff of everyday life, and prison was a middle-class experience? In its distribution of wealth, Russia was the most unequal country in the world; the EU’s far greater wealth was also far more evenly shared among its citizens. Glazyev helped his master maintain Russian kleptocracy by changing the subject from prosperity to values, to what Putin called “civilization.””
In reporting on evidence of Trump’s behavior, the author states that: “Trump’s contribution to global heterosexuality was to bring a beauty pageant to the Moscow suburbs, or rather to look on as Russians did so. In principle he was the organizer; in fact he was paid twenty million dollars to oversee the work of his Russian colleagues. This was a pattern of relations between Russians and Trump that was by then long established: Trump was paid so that his name could assist Russians who knew something about money and power. … Just a few weeks earlier, in April 2013, the FBI had arrested twenty-nine men suspected of running two gambling rings inside Trump Tower.”
In terms of Russia influencing BREXIT, Snyder states: “Russian internet trolls, live people who participated in exchanges with British voters, and Russian Twitter
bots, computer programs that sent out millions of targeted messages, engaged massively on behalf of the Leave campaign. Four hundred and nineteen Twitter accounts that posted on Brexit were localized to Russia’s Internet Research Agency—later, every single one of them would also post on behalf of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.” Moreover, the author states that: “Brexit was a major triumph for Russian foreign policy, and a sign that a cyber campaign directed from Moscow could change reality. … For some time, Russian politicians had been urging Britain to separate from the European Union.”
As to influencing Ukraine, Snyder states: “In November 2013, Yanukovych failed everyone: he did not sign the completed association agreement, nor did he bring Ukraine into Eurasia. In February 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine.” As an historian, Snyder provides detailed maps for several centuries of development and detailed insight into European, Polish and Ukrainian development, including for example, this material: “After 1569 on the territory of today’s Ukraine, the eastern Christian traditions of Rus were challenged by western Christianity, which was in the midst of fertile transformations. Polish Catholic and Protestant thinkers, aided by the printing press, challenged the hold of eastern Christianity on the lands of Rus. Some of the Orthodox warlords of Rus converted to Protestantism or Catholicism and adopted the Polish language for communication among themselves.
Snyder writes: “State control of agriculture killed between three and four million inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine by starvation. Adolf Hitler saw Ukraine as the fertile territory that would transform Germany into a world power. Control of its black earth was his war aim. As a result of the German occupation that began in 1941, more than three million more inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine were killed, including about 1.6 million Jews murdered by the Germans and local policemen and militias. … Soviet Ukraine was the second most populous republic of the USSR, after Soviet Russia. In Soviet Ukraine’s western districts, which had been part of Poland before the Second World War, Ukrainian nationalists resisted the imposition of Soviet rule. In a series of deportations in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they and their families were sent by the hundreds of thousands to the Soviet concentration camp system …
The author writes: “After his defeat, Yanukovych hired the American political consultant Paul Manafort to improve his image. Although Manafort maintained a residence in Trump Tower in New York, he spent a great deal of time in Ukraine. Under Manafort’s tutelage, Yanukovych got a better haircut and better suits, and began to talk with his hands. … Like Manafort’s next client, Donald Trump, Yanukovych rose to power on a campaign of cultural grievance mixed with the hope that an oligarch might defend the people against an oligarchy.” And goes on to write that: ‘After the mass killing, Yanukovych was abandoned by the parliamentary deputies who had supported him and the policemen who had protected him. He fled his garish residence, leaving behind a trove of documents—including records of large cash payments to his advisor Paul Manafort, who two years later surfaced as the campaign manager of Donald Trump.”
In terms of using cyberwarfare, Snyder states: ‘In the few days between the sniper massacre of February 20 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, shocking but fictitious reports appeared about Ukrainian atrocities in Crimea, and about refugees from the peninsula who needed urgent assistance. Russian military intelligence created fictitious personae on the internet to spread these stories. A group of paid internet trolls in St. Petersburg, known as the Internet Research Agency, was at work to confuse Ukrainian and international opinion. This was by now a signature of Russian foreign policy: the cyber campaign that would accompany a real war.”
Snyder states: “A modest affair in military terms, the Russian invasion of southern and then southeastern Ukraine involved the most sophisticated propaganda campaign in the history of warfare. … The propaganda worked at two levels: first, as a direct assault on factuality; second, as an unconditional proclamation of innocence …. No war was taking place. … When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2014, President Putin lied with purpose. On February 28 he claimed, “We have no intention of rattling the sabre and sending troops to Crimea.” He had already sent troops to Crimea. … At the moment he uttered these words, Russian troops had been marching through Ukrainian sovereign territory for four days.” And “Putin’s direct assault on factuality might be called implausible deniability.” Moreover, “The suffering of Ukrainian citizens continued, with some ten thousand killed and about two million displaced.”
As to additional details of cyberwarfare, Snyder relates: “Russia’s war against Ukraine was called a “hybrid war.” The problem with phrasings in which the noun “war” is qualified by an adjective such as “hybrid” is that they sound like “war minus” when what they really mean is “war plus.” Snyder writes: “In autumn 2015, hackers attacked Ukrainian media companies and the Ukrainian railway system. That December, hackers brought down three transmission stations of the Ukrainian power grid, knocking out fifty substations and denying power to a quarter million people. In autumn 2016, hackers attacked the Ukrainian railway, seaport authority, treasury, and the ministries of finance, infrastructure, and defense. They also carried out a second and far more sophisticated attack on the Ukrainian power grid, bringing down a transmission station in Kyiv. This cyberwar made no headlines in the West at the time, but it represented the future of warfare.”
The author, explains: “Americans were found who would help Russians consider more refined interventions in U.S. politics. The vice president of the data-mining company Cambridge Analytica, a certain Steve Bannon, met with Russian oil executives in 2014 and 2015. He ordered his company to test messages about Putin on the American public. He also tested phrases such as “build that wall” and “drain the swamp.” In August 2016, Bannon became the campaign manager of Donald Trump. Only then did some Americans begin to pay attention.”
Snyder writes: “Given native kleptocracy and dependence on commodity exports, Russian state power could not increase, nor Russian technology close the gap with Europe or America. Relative power could however be gained by weakening others: by invading Ukraine to keep it away from Europe, for example. The concurrent information war was meant to weaken the EU and the United States. … In strategic relativism, the point is to transform international politics into a negative-sum game, where a skillful player will lose less than everyone else.”
Offering additional insight into cyberwarfare, Snyder states: “How were opinion leaders of the Left seduced by Vladimir Putin, the global leader of the extreme Right? Russia generated tropes targeted at what cyberwar professionals call “susceptibilities”: what people seem likely to believe given their utterances and behavior. It was possible to claim that Ukraine was a Jewish construction (for one audience) and also that Ukraine was a fascist construction (for another audience). … Enormous amounts of time were wasted in Britain, the United States, and Europe in 2014 and 2015 on discussions about whether Ukraine existed and whether Russia had invaded it. That triumph of informational warfare was instructive for Russian leaders. In the invasion of Ukraine, the main Russian victories were in the minds of Europeans and Americans, not on the battlefields.”
As to tying the stories together the author states: “In July 2016, not long after the Brexit referendum, Donald Trump said, “Putin is not going into Ukraine, you can mark it down.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine had begun more than two years before, in February 2014, right after snipers murdered Ukrainians …. It was thanks to that very set of events that Trump had a campaign manager. Yanukovych fled to Russia, but his advisor Paul Manafort kept working for a pro-Russian party in Ukraine through the end of 2015. Manafort’s new employer, the Opposition Bloc, was precisely the part of the Ukrainian political system that wanted to do business with Russia while Russia was invading Ukraine. This was the perfect transition to Manafort’s next job. In 2016, he moved to New York and took over the management of Trump’s campaign. In 2014, Trump had known that Russia had invaded Ukraine. Under Manafort’s tutelage, Trump proclaimed Russian innocence. … When Moscow brought to bear in the United States the same techniques used in Ukraine, few on the American Right or the American Left noticed. ….”
As to Trump and his advancement, Snyder postulates (and then provides what some might view as supporting circumstantial evidence): “Trump’s advance to the Oval Office had three stages, First, Russians had to transform a failed real estate developer into a recipient of their capital. … Second, this failed real estate developer had to portray, on American television, a successful businessman. Finally, Russia intervened with purpose and success to support the fictional character “Donald Trump, successful businessman” in the 2016 presidential election. … Russians knew Trump for what he was: not the “VERY successful businessman” of his tweets but an American loser who became a Russian tool. …Russian money had saved him from the fate that would normally await anyone with his record of failure. … Russian gangsters began to launder money by buying and selling apartment units in Trump Tower in 1984. … After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian mob extended its reach in New York. The most notorious Russian hit man, long sought by the FBI, resided in Trump Tower. Russians were arrested for running a gambling ring from the apartment beneath Trump’s own. In Trump World Tower, constructed between 1999 and 2001 on the east side of Manhattan near the United Nations, a third of the luxury units were bought by people or entities from the former Soviet Union.” Moreover, “Seven hundred units of Trump properties in South Florida were purchased by shell companies. Two men associated with those shell companies were convicted of running a gambling and laundering scheme from Trump Tower.” And goes on to write: “After his 2004 bankruptcy, no American bank would lend him money. … A Russian oligarch bought a house from Trump for $ 55 million more than Trump had paid for it. … Having realized that apartment complexes could be used to launder money, Russians used Trump’s name to build more buildings. As Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
In terms of using cyberwarfare, Snyder writes: “By 2016, the average American spent more than ten hours a day in front of screens, most of that with devices connected to the internet. … The aim of Russian cyberwar was to bring Trump to the Oval Office through what seemed to be normal procedures. Trump did not need to understand this, … The dedicated Russian cyberwar center known as the Internet Research Agency manipulated European and American opinion about Russia’s war in Ukraine.” And goes on to write: “Russians at work in front of keyboards in St. Petersburg induced Americans to take part in at least a dozen public events, all of them with drastic themes. Right before the election, Russia placed three thousand advertisements on Facebook … In general, Americans were not exposed to Russian propaganda randomly, but in accordance with their own susceptibilities, as revealed by their practices on the internet. … The theme of Muslim terrorism, which Russia had already exploited in France and Germany, was also developed in the United States.
Even in normal times on routine subjects, perhaps 10% of Twitter accounts (a conservative estimate) are bots rather than human beings: that is, computer programs of greater or lesser sophistication, designed to spread certain messages to a target audience. Though bots are less numerous than humans on Twitter, they are more efficient than humans in sending messages.”
The author offers that: “Unlike Russians, Americans tend to get their news from the internet. According to one survey, 44% of Americans get their news from a single internet platform: Facebook. The interactivity of the internet creates an impression of mental effort while impeding reflection. The internet is an attention economy, which means that profit-seeking platforms are designed to divide the attention of their users into the smallest possible units that can be exploited by advertising messages.
News that draws viewers tends to wear a neural path between prejudice and outrage. When each day is devoted to emotional venting about supposed enemies, the present becomes endless, eternal. In these conditions, a fictional candidate enjoyed a considerable advantage. … Though internet platforms became major American news providers, they were not regulated as such in the United States. Two Facebook products, News Feed and Trending Topics, purveyed countless fictions.” And goes on to state: “… the American internet became an attack surface for the Russian secret services, who were able to do what they liked inside the American psychosphere for eighteen months without anyone reacting.”
As to guns and Russian attempts to use it to influence unrest in America, Snyder writes that: “The rule of law requires that the government control violence, and that the population expects that government can do so. The presence of guns in American society, which can feel like strength to some Americans, appeared in Moscow as a national weakness. In 2016, Russia appealed directly to Americans to buy and use guns, amplifying the rhetoric of the Trump campaign. … The Russian cyber campaign was enthusiastic about the right of Americans to bear arms, celebrating the Second Amendment and calling upon Americans to fear terrorism and to buy firearms to protect themselves. … Meanwhile, Russian authorities were cooperating with the American gun lobby in the real world. … A Russian group called Right to Bear Arms cultivated ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA). … Given that the NRA endorsed and funded Trump, that it was a gun organization, and that Trump called the press an “enemy,” it was hard to interpret this as anything other than a threat. Democracy depends upon the free exchange of ideas, where “free” means “without the threat of violence.” An important sign of the collapse of the rule of law is the rise of a paramilitary and its merger with government power.”
Your audiobook is waiting!
Enjoy a free trial on us
- Click above for unlimited listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts.
- One credit a month to pick any title from our entire premium selection — yours to keep (you'll use your first credit now).
- You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
- $14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel online anytime.
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company
The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
Audible Audiobook
– Unabridged
Read & Listen
Switch between reading the Kindle book & listening to the Audible audiobook with Whispersync for Voice.
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of $12.99 after you buy the Kindle book.
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of $12.99 after you buy the Kindle book.
People who viewed this also viewed
Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
People who bought this also bought
Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
Related to this topic
Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
The Road to Unfreedom is easily traveled
When I studied international politics in the 1980s, it didn't register with me how easy it would be for a democracy to morph into an autocracy - a dictatorship. Then along came Trump whose disregard for our laws and norms showed me how easily it could happen to us. Nightmares resulted. Timothy Snider's "The Road to Unfreedom" made me understand the urgency of taking action to save our democracy.As a Political Scientist, I highly recommend this book along with "On Tyranny" also authored by Timothy Snyder who is Richard C Levin Professor of History at Yale and a permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.We need to act to make ourselves aware of what is happening and we need to do all we can to keep our democracy.
Top reviews from other countries
JOHN I. CAMPBELL
A MUST read. The growth of Authoritarianism, understanding the Ukraine war.
Reviewed in Canada on August 11, 2023Rr
frente al nuevo orden mundial, Snyder explica como la historia nos da enseñanzas para superarlo
Reviewed in Mexico on June 23, 2023
Amazon Customer
What A Tangle Web They Weave
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 13, 2024Tim Finnerty
Very good explanation of Russia's original invasion of Ukraine in 2014
Reviewed in Belgium on April 5, 2024