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.