The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder

Continuing revelations about Russian interference in American and European elections have become routine, almost banal.  Timothy Snyder, a historian who achieved some popularity after his previous publications (Bloodlands and Black Earth), leaves history (although not altogether) with this latest volume and enters our current political discourse.  Historians are usually wary of entering into debates about current events.  However, when our present administration regularly attempts to rewrite and adjust history to fit its needs, historians should and ought to help penetrate the fog of baseless opinions that has begun to consume and displace civil discourse and the foundations of civil society.

“The Road to Unfreedom” serves as an important starting point for readers who want a more comprehensive understanding of the political intersection between Russia, Europe, and the United States since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  As this text focuses on recent events, the diligence historians usually bring to subjects they are investigating is not always present.  News and media publications – making up a large portion of the source material – make mistakes.  Archival access is limited or nonexistent for recent government actions and operations, and Snyder himself admits that he is still processing the underlining ideas and theories he posits for readers.  Although Snyder received mixed reviews, from historians, for his last two major publications, he is nonetheless an excellent researcher and writer.  Thus, while not the final word on the numerous topics he covers, this is a volume that readers who want a better understanding of what has been happening for the past few years in the US and the past few decades in Russia need to read carefully.

The volume’s theoretical foundations rely on Snyder’s discussion and concentration on the writings of Ivan Ilyin, a little known personality until Putin’s rise to power.  Ilyin, a philosopher and Slavophile who lived through the First and Second World War, struggled to determine Russia’s place in the world and to explain the Russian Revolution.  He sought a middle ground, or a third option, between totalitarian dictatorships and democracy.  Nikita Mikhalkov helped introduce Ilyin to Putin, who in turn incorporated Ilyin’s thoughts into his own ideas about Russia’s place in the world while shaping his administration.  This leads to Snyder’s ideas about the two types of politics that we now live under: the politics of inevitability and eternity.  For Snyder, the politics of inevitability apply primarily to the United States in the shadow of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.  The idea is that democratic and capitalist progress is inevitable, no matter what you do, the course is still there and will invariably be followed because others will pick up the slack or help steer the ship of state in the predetermined direction of democratic progress.  The politics of inevitability relies on the peaceful process of succession and transition of power.  If a president or prime minister performs poorly, citizens know that eventually they can vote out an existing administration and a new one can take its place to right previous wrongs.  The politics of eternity, however, are what Snyder classifies Russia’s current administration as, a state kept in eternal crisis with the outside world.  Most recent examples include the frozen conflicts in Transnistria, Georgia, and now Ukraine (regularly characterized as “fascist” to tie into Russian memories of the Second World War), and the “cultural conflict” against homosexuality that Putin’s administration consistently emphasizes when it comes to Europe and the United States. 

Although these two categories offer a Manichean view of the current state of politics, they are still useful for understanding what is at stake and they help explain, at least in part, Russian actions both at home and abroad.  Putin and Russia have evolved since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Unfortunately, this is one of Snyder’s weaknesses in that he hardly discusses the numerous decisions made by the United States in the 1990s that negatively affected Russians and their views of America, NATO, and the European Union.  Snyder offers little to no analysis of Russia’s attitude toward NATO, how Putin perceived the decision to include the Baltics and other East European states into NATO, or how Russians propagandized the decision to become a regular talking point against the US.  Nor is there any mention of the numerous economic crises suffered by Russians throughout the 1990s and 2000s, including how they altered Russian perceptions of capitalism and democracy, including their representative institutions.   This also raises a more inherent weakness of the entire volume in that Snyder constantly emphasizes Russian agency to the detriment of Europe and the US, who are portrayed more often than not reacting to Russian actions – in effect giving too much credit to Russia and exaggerating her strengths and weaknesses.  This is a strategy Putin himself utilizes on a regular basis as he simultaneously portrays Russia as a power that still matters – both in the near abroad and in world affairs – but one that hardly has the power to influence an election in the US. 

As Snyder explains, living in a country that relies on the politics of eternity means consistently manufacturing crises, including what happened a decade ago with the Russian invasion of Georgia.  Although Russia was not the direct instigator of the conflict, it created another opportunity to portray Russia as under attack from both forces on the border and those “sponsoring” Georgia, inevitably the West.  Ukraine became another victim of opportunity after the Sochi Olympics.  Putin did not necessarily plan to annex Crimea or begin a frozen conflict in Eastern Ukraine.  However, he used the opportunity to employ WWII era rhetoric, initially insisting on the need to protect Russian citizens in the “near abroad” (those located in Ukrainian territory) while portraying the post-Yanukovych government as fascist – thus an enemy of Russia and Russian citizens in general.  Russian actions in Ukraine laid bare the extremes of Russian propaganda at home and abroad, and this is the topic that Snyder does so much to bring to the forefront and analyze for the benefit of his readers.  Moreover, here is where we can begin to trace Russian interference in our 2016 election.

Following Ilyin’s philosophy, Snyder describes how Putin’s administration portrays Russia as an innocent victim vulnerable to the fascist tendencies of those surrounding her, who themselves were regularly victims of western conspiracies.  Thus perceived notions of western interference in the color revolutions and in Russian protests against Putin at home provided ready fodder for Russian propaganda outlets.  Moreover, this resulted in Putin’s hatred of Hillary Clinton (who was Secretary of State in 2012, when some of the largest demonstrations took place in Russia).  Originally, propaganda meant emphasizing the perceived good of an idea or event and an omission of anything that might look bad (in the US we call this PR).  Today’s propaganda coming out of Russia is quite post-modern in its disregard for a single “truth” and use of “whataboutism” to divert attention from indefensible positions.  The truth or facts do not matter for Russian propaganda.  Be it with respect to Russian forces showing up in Crimea, or the shooting down of MH17, Russian sources began producing numerous narratives for why “little green men” were suddenly showing up in Crimea or, in the case of MH17, who or what was responsible for bringing down the plane.  No matter the evidence, media outlets presented new versions, new sources, and new theories in order to muddle the conversation and steer it away from the truth.  The result was an inevitable degradation of informed discourse and the idea that one conspiracy theory is just as good as another or is just as good as the truth and only your emotional needs at any given point in time will decide what you choose to believe.  Snyder fears that feelings will displace logical explanations, theories that reinforce pre-existing beliefs will replace factual evidence with the result that intellectual discourse will breakdown and help usher in an “unfree” state that relies on the politics of eternity rather than inevitability.  Truth ceases to matter in a fractured society that moves from one manufactured crisis to another, kept in eternal fear of the other.  This, in essence, is what we have recently witnessed occur throughout America.  For Putin, turning the US into another version of Russia is part of the endgame.  Showing that US “democracy” at its core is no more factual, truthful, or representative of its citizens than Russia’s current government, means America carries no greater credibility on the world stage than its Russian counterpart does.  Today, there is no doubt that our current administration had regular contact with Russians – before, during, and after the election – and that Trump’s business has been sustained on money funneled through shell corporations and off-shore accounts as Russian oligarchs and mobsters laundered untold millions through questionable real estate ventures.  Trump’s business acumen relies on his either being too dumb to realize what was happening, or simply not caring because he was in debt for billions, and all his “genius” business ventures failed. 

Recently, Russian cyberattacks have surpassed interference in the US election process.  Russian bots and trolls on the internet will inevitably exploit any events that occur in America (NFL players kneeling during the anthem, Black Lives Matter, 2^nd amendment, etc.) to fan the flames of anger, resentment, bitterness, and hostility in order to continue the degradation of our most valued institutions.  Russian meddling does not have to be sophisticated nor does it need to create conspiracy theories; they use and exploit those that already exist to steer us away from conversations we need to engage in and they rely on obfuscation to continue showing the US in the worst possible light.  In truth, America’s political climate cannot be solely blamed on Russian cyberattacks; the US has a host of problems and issues that it needs to address aside from Russian interference.  Snyder discusses some of them, including the rising level of inequality, the death of local news, gerrymandering, and the Citizens United ruling that allowed corporations and those with enough money to buy political influence.  These problems are creating fertile territory for racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and xenophobia to become battlegrounds for Russian internet trolls or serve as talking points for political pundits paid for being nothing more than a mouthpiece on behalf of special interest groups. 

We have no way of knowing to what extent Ilyin’s philosophy has influenced Putin (although Putin has referenced him in speeches) or what effect Snyder’s ideas around the “politics of inevitability” and “eternity” will have on our society.  Nor do we know the full impact or extent of Russia’s interference in our electoral process, aside from the fact that it worked in tandem with the Trump campaign’s general rhetoric against Democrats and aimed at specific segments of the American population.  What we do know is that Putin’s administration has attempted to export its ideology throughout the world by employing a type of cyber warfare.  Trolls regularly attempt to reduce the value of facts and the truth so that societal development is stalled because a conversation without an agreed upon factual foundation will never lead to solutions, only an endless cycle of arguments that rely on entrenched positions and talking points both sides have previously perfected and will continually employ.  Without an ability to make progress on issues that continue to divide our society, we will transition to a politics of eternity, reduced to a never-ending existential crisis, as we reinforce our fears instead of confronting them.