Timothy Snyder
banner
timothysnyder.bsky.social
Timothy Snyder
@timothysnyder.bsky.social

Temerty Professor of Modern European History, Munk School, University of Toronto; Permanent Fellow, IWM Vienna; Emeritus Levin Professor, Yale. Author of "On Freedom," "On Tyranny," "Our Malady," "Road to Unfreedom," "Black Earth," and "Bloodlands" .. more

Timothy David Snyder is an American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He holds the inaugural Chair in Modern European History, supported by the Temerty Endowment for Ukrainian Studies, at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. From 2017 to 2025 he was also the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University. .. more

Political science 62%
Sociology 16%

The other day I experienced an inhuman assault on Christmas – an AI carol. The machine's inability to understand the carol's message of love made it eerie. Basic cultural forms like holiday ritual and music are weakened under the assault of algorithms.
snyder.substack.com/p/the-inhuma...
The inhuman assault on Christmas
On Christmas Carols, 1/2
snyder.substack.com

Multiple envoys selected by Putin meet in warm American city to discuss future of Ukraine
Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev arrived at a Miami golf club for another round of golf club diplomacy with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Reposted by Philip Nel

Do we charge for this? Or is it a free service we provide to friendly dictators?
The Trump administration is recalling nearly 30 career diplomats from ambassadorial and other senior embassy posts as it moves to reshape the U.S. diplomatic posture abroad.
Trump removes nearly 30 career diplomats from ambassadorial positions
www.inquirer.com

This struck me too. As Anne Applebaum doesn’t mention, she wrote a classic history of the Gulag.
The CBS investigation portrays a modern concentration camp, similar to the Soviet GULAG (like CECOT, an acronym): sadistic guards, 24 hour lighting, isolation cells.
Americans once opposed this inhumane system.
The Trump administration sent innocent people there to suffer.
The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5
The CBS investigation portrays a modern concentration camp, similar to the Soviet GULAG (like CECOT, an acronym): sadistic guards, 24 hour lighting, isolation cells.
Americans once opposed this inhumane system.
The Trump administration sent innocent people there to suffer.
The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

Reposted by Timothy Snyder

The Trump administration is recalling nearly 30 career diplomats from ambassadorial and other senior embassy posts as it moves to reshape the U.S. diplomatic posture abroad.
Trump removes nearly 30 career diplomats from ambassadorial positions
www.inquirer.com

Reposted by Timothy Snyder

For an excellent study of medicalizing euphemisms please see Golfo Alexopolous’s history of the Gulag, entitled "Illness and Inhumanity."

Reposted by Timothy Snyder

Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

Reposted by Gerald Friedman

As a historian I've looked at hundreds of thousands of pages of government documents. And I just have to say that aside from being obviously illegal and clearly suggestive of some major crime, this “redaction” business is not a position in which serious people or serious governments find themselves
There is no basis to withhold these images under the clear terms of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. None.
WOW: The DOJ has DELETED an image from its release of the Epstein files that shows photos of Trump in a drawer.

Yesterday, we noted that this image — file 468 — likely slipped through the cracks while officials were attempting to hide materials pertaining to Trump.

Now, it’s gone.

In English we know it as “Carol of the Bells,” but the melody arises from a Ukrainian folk tradition of songs welcoming the new year and summoning the forces of nature to meet human labor and bring prosperity.
Do listen.
I wrote about the history here: snyder.substack.com/p/o-generous...
Another beautiful Shchedryk performance amidst ruins.

It was set in what used to be a DTEK thermal power plant — now destroyed by russia.

The contrast between russia’s destructive nature and the Ukrainian will to create beauty even in the darkest times is palpable.
JD Vance gets the biggest applause of his speech so far when he says "by the grace of God we always will be a Christian nation"

Reposted by Timothy Snyder

Reposted by Timothy Snyder

There is no basis to withhold these images under the clear terms of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. None.
WOW: The DOJ has DELETED an image from its release of the Epstein files that shows photos of Trump in a drawer.

Yesterday, we noted that this image — file 468 — likely slipped through the cracks while officials were attempting to hide materials pertaining to Trump.

Now, it’s gone.
Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev arrived at a Miami golf club for another round of golf club diplomacy with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Reposted by Timothy Snyder

Ukraine keeps defying the possible through tactics we have never seen before. We must keep putting pressure on Russia.
Speaking with @phillipspobrien.bsky.social

A year later and I'm happily remembering that Prof Iryna Vushko’s "Lost Fatherland" was a Financial Times book of the year. Hugely impressed and proud.
www.ft.com/content/4ea7...
Best books of 2024: History
Tony Barber selects his must-read titles
www.ft.com