blood lands
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Remembered for Their ChoicesCharlotte La NasaHistory 352Prof Charles Perry February 23rd 2015
Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands claims that the mass killings in Poland, Ukrain,
Russia, Belarus, and the Baltic States between 1933 and 1945 were the central event
of European history (Snyder, 380). Snyder’s book addresses the real people, choices,
and circumstances that made up this significant event, and seeks to piece together
this information in order to answer the questions; what happened in the span of
twelve years to amount to the death of 14 million people? And, why did these people
have to die? Snyder plainly introduces the importance of this question being
answered, and why he feels obligated to tell this story, by stating “It is easy to
sanctify the policies or identities by the deaths of the victims. It is less appealing, but
morally more urgent to understand the actions of the perpetrators”(400). It would
save a lot of emotional energy to claim that the Nazis were inhuman, and that we
need not discuss their choices because they can only be explained as beneath our
moral capacity as humans. Snyder explains that to assume that this story can be
excluded from history because of its extremity is dangerous because these were in
fact human beings that made real choices, based on dreadfully misguided ethical
thought processes. For this reason Snyder seeks to answer the questions of why and
how this occurred, by guiding us through the individualized accounts of European
history’s central event.
Millions of Jews and peasants of central Europe became the victims of the
basic moral concept of “the sacrifice of the individual in the name of the
community”(400). Snyder explains the horrific fates of the Bloodlands in the most
basic moral terms; that millions of people died because Stalin and Hitler genuinely
believed that the suffering they created in the present would lead to a more perfect
world, and that the end would justify the means. Snyder carefully details the
separate deaths, and economic conditions that seemed to justify them in
chronological order because Hitler and Stalin both made careful, and distinct
decisions that they believed would yield an economic profit and allow for social
advancement could occur (395). We must observe Snyder’s writings and remember
this story because the millions of deaths were not pointless killings dictated by
demons. These millions of deaths were highly thought out attempts to make the
world better, lead by horribly misguided, malicious people. Just as every other
leader of grand acts of war and violence in the twentieth century, these men were
convinced of their own personal victimhood. This shocking moral crisis, combined
with the single largest act of genocide our world has ever seen, renders these twelve
gruesome years as the central event of European history. It was great disturbance
that exemplifies the most tragic and concerning elements of human nature.
While Hitler and Stalin were human beings trying to achieve what they
wrongly perceived as desirable policies, Snyder explains that their actions were
enabled by a remarkable lack of value for individual human life (395). Snyder
amends the lack of care these millions were given by their murderers, by explaining
a history of mass death, through the lenses of individual lives. One of Snyder’s many
missions in writing Bloodlands is to give humanity to the mindnumbing death tolls
resulting from Stalin and Hitler’s efforts to advance society. Snyder states, “Only a
history of mass killing can unite the numbers and memories”. In order to accomplish
this, the narrative addresses individualized stories and memories of the horrific
circumstances that transgressed in the area between central Poland and Russia. In
doing so the historian contextualizes the quantitative details and provides human
identity for the lives that are almost lost behind these numbers. The method of
addressing specific experiences employs the voices of these victims who left their
memories in diaries, letters, and with loved ones who witnessed their peril.
Snyder argues that his task in reporting these memories is important
because it prevents future nationalists from misappropriating their own casualties
during the second World War and convincing the ignorant world of their
martyrdom. Snyder explains this concern by stating “Without history the memories
become private, which today means national; and the numbers become public,
which is to say an instrument in the international competition for martyrdom.
Memory is mine and I have the right to do with it as I please; numbers are objective
and you must accept my counts weather you like it or not”(402). In an attempt to
raise nationalist ideals, the Soviet union reported demographic projections of
civilian and soldier casualties of the second world war to project themselves as
martyrs, Snyder’s often bone chilling narrative leaves no room for misleading
numbers, because the staggering counts (rather than projections) in his narrative
are matched with the stories of real people. Snyder’s ability to address this
humanity succeeds in preventing the death tolls of the Bloodlands from having the
chance to be objective numerical figures.
Snyder consistently upholds his claim that numbers must be matched with
memory, and that one cannot be addressed without the other. Bloodlands is a
narrative based on recollection, that also relies heavily on statistics, addressing with
remarkable specificity the dreadful sums that are made up by the memories he
addresses throughout the book. These statistics are important to address because
they are astounding, and are the reason why the experiences of the bloodlands
make up Europe’s single greatest event. Snyder expresses the importance of these
astounding numbers by stating “Within the history of the mass killing in the
Bloodlands, recollection must include the one million (times one) distinct soviet
prisoners of war killed by the Germans in 1941-1944, or the 3.3 million (times one)
distinct Ukrainian peasants starved by the soviet regime in 1932-1933”(408).
Snyder uses this statement to explain the importance of remembering these
shocking statistics, and he carefully chooses the word “distinct” to point out that
within those large numerical sums are individuals. Snyder sets out to prevent the
casualties of human beings from being forgotten in a lump sum, and his efforts are
successful. He reminds the reader “each of them died a different death because each
of them lived a different life”(XV). This reminder echoes in the countless accounts of
grueling stories of cannibalism, frightened parents abandoning their children, and
families packed in trains, awaiting death.
While it is impossible to recount the personal story of every living soul
accounted for in these sums, Snyder manages to illuminate what many individuals
may have gone through by describing their experiences in the context of a family
role. When describing the effects on the city of Leningrad as Hitler attempted to
wipe its existence from the face of the earth, rather than only addressing the fact
that one million Leningrad residents died in 1944, Snyder makes it clear to the
reader what it meant to experience the death of this Soviet city as a member of a
family. The family experience is one that thousands of men and women who died
can identify with, so that even if their own story cannot be recounted, their
experience is understood by history. Snyder tells the story of Wanda Zvierieva, and
introduces her as a daughter by stating that she “later remembered her mother with
great love and admiration”(174). This choice to introduce Wanda as a loving and
devoted daughter identifies her as a human being, with a thriving life prior to the
siege of Leningrad. Snyder then describes Wanda’s grueling experience in the siege
of Leningrad,
She awakened to find her mother standing over her with a sickle. She struggled with and overcame her mother, “or the shadow that was left of her”. She gave her mother’s actions the charitable interpretation: that he mother wished to spare her the suffering of starvation by killing her quickly (174)
This glimpse into a young girl’s experience as a family member reveals more
than the death and starvation that would characterize her legacy if she was only
remembered as a small part of the thousands that died. Snyder paints her as loving
daughter, and portrays her mother as a woman faced with the traumatizing fate of
watching her children starve, and making the choice to spare them that pain.
Snyder chose to tell a story that many people had previously misunderstood.
Those without the opportunity to become familiar with the issues addressed in
Snyder’s Bloodlands, often believe that Hitler’s political mass murder had mostly
been accomplished in concentration camps. Many people of the western world are
also completely unaware of Stalin’s secret starvation of the peasantry.. Part of
Snyder’s mission is to reveal the truth of what happened in the Bloodlands during
the 1930’s and 40’s, and clarify that these occurrences cannot be manipulated or
argued with. He asserts the importance of this mission by stating “Without a history
built and defended upon an entirely different foundation, we will find that Hitler and
Stalin continue to define their own works for us (Xviii).” The history that Snyder
writes is not objective because it seeks to tell personal stories, yet the narrative
simultaneously confronts the irreducibility of the truth, and ensures the existence of
a fact based account, untainted by the ideology of communism and fascism. In his
accounts of the systematic killing of hundreds of thousands of people, Snyder
dictates the choices of two dictators, rather than presenting the circumstances that
surrounded them and allowing us the chance to analyze for ourselves how they may
have been forced to commit these crimes against humanity.
Snyder provides a very traditional historical account by subscribing to
Trevor Roper’s view of the art of history as describing what happened in the context
of what might have happened. Snyder never allows the reader to believe that the
atrocities of the Bloodlands were bound to happen, but consistently reveals that
each killing was a strategic choice to gain a profit, save money, or generate labor. By
addresses choices that lead up to the death of 14 million civilians, both the victims
and perpetrators in this history are given total agency over these events. As a result
Snyder’s book is an overwhelming success in answering the questions about how
and why millions of innocent people were slaughtered, defining these death as the
central event in European history, and characterizing the traumas of Twentieth
Century Eastern Europe as human and personal.
Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic,
2010. Print.
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