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LibraryThing member Stbalbach
The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 created a reading problem. Nothing seemed relevant or as important as current events. I picked up and put down many books in favor of Reddit feeds. Then I found this book. It turned out to be perfect. It explains how Russia (or, Putin and his
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circle) see the world and why the invasion of Ukraine was easy to foretell. There will be many books about the war, this is easily the best place to start. It's a book-length "Introduction" of how things got here, why, and where they are going. Show Less
LibraryThing member rivkat
Tracks Russia’s propaganda (and at times physical) assault on Ukraine, Europe, and the US. Snyder argues that Russia has fallen under the spell of “eternal time”—in which people believe that nothing can change for the better, and so all that can bring relief/pleasure is a mythic past
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nationhood that must always be asserted against enemies. Europe and the US were complacent, believing that there was no alternative to modern capitalism—but autocracy was waiting, and has succeeded in placing its representative in the US Presidency. Very distressing look at the theorists, if you can call them that, behind Russia’s export of autocracy, as well as at how Russia invaded Ukraine but got the world to ignore that fact. Show Less
LibraryThing member over.the.edge
The Road To Unfreedom
by Tim Snyder
2018
Tim Duggan Books
5 / 5
If your wondering just how deep-how involved- Donald Trump is with Russia, this book will make you sweat. His ties with Putin have a long history and is much deeper and longer. Putinś ´Politics of Inevitablity´ , his stabilization of
This book shows how Putin helped Trump, a failed real estate developer, into a recipient of capitol. To portray that failed real estate developer as a wealthy American businessman on TV and to finally intervene and support this person in the 2016 election. No surprise he called Putin first to be congratulated.
Putins buying of Trump began before the 1990ś. He taught Trump one lesson: strategic relativism.
*Russia cannot become stronger, so it must make others appear weak, as weal as Russia.
*Putin can´t change his own reputation, so he must change how others view his opponents.
p. 267: ¨Trump adopted the Russian double standard: he was permitted to lie all the time, but any minor error by a journalist discredited the entire profession of journalism.¨
¨He referred to them as the ´enemy of the American people´ and claimed what they produced was ¨fake news¨. Trump was proud of these formulations, although both were Russian.¨
It was more important to try to humiliate a black president than it was to defend the independence of the USA. Putin waited to find an easy and vulnerable candidate. He has groomed Trump for years, training him to do his dirty work. Trump still does not get it.
This is a chilling and detailed history of the Soviet Union and EU- the Ukraine and Russia. The history of the countries and their political histories are detailed. And how it affects the USA-how deeply Putin has been able to begin to turn us from a democratic country to a much more vulnerable and easily controlled state of authoritarian rule. He commandeered Trump to be his pony...his boy......to make confusion, rhetoric and fake news become the norm.
Because you can´t change Russia.
But you can try to change the way the rest of the world views your biggest opponent. With Trump in the White House it is that much easier to convince the rest of the world that Russia is not much different than the USA. So Putin is just like us......Russia is innocent. Russia is pure. Its the USA that we should fear.......
Put down ´Fear´ and read this. It actually is a more true and real account of what kind of monster Trump is.
by Tim Snyder
2018
Tim Duggan Books
5 / 5
If your wondering just how deep-how involved- Donald Trump is with Russia, this book will make you sweat. His ties with Putin have a long history and is much deeper and longer. Putinś ´Politics of Inevitablity´ , his stabilization of
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massive inequality, the displacement of policy by propaganda, the ¨fake news¨ are some ways Putin used to spread confusion, distrust and discredit journalists, beginning 20 or more years ago. How he rose to power and drove out opponents, by attacking the individual vs. totalitarianism. Russia still claims no responsibility for the war with the Ukraine. This book shows how Putin helped Trump, a failed real estate developer, into a recipient of capitol. To portray that failed real estate developer as a wealthy American businessman on TV and to finally intervene and support this person in the 2016 election. No surprise he called Putin first to be congratulated.
Putins buying of Trump began before the 1990ś. He taught Trump one lesson: strategic relativism.
*Russia cannot become stronger, so it must make others appear weak, as weal as Russia.
*Putin can´t change his own reputation, so he must change how others view his opponents.
p. 267: ¨Trump adopted the Russian double standard: he was permitted to lie all the time, but any minor error by a journalist discredited the entire profession of journalism.¨
¨He referred to them as the ´enemy of the American people´ and claimed what they produced was ¨fake news¨. Trump was proud of these formulations, although both were Russian.¨
It was more important to try to humiliate a black president than it was to defend the independence of the USA. Putin waited to find an easy and vulnerable candidate. He has groomed Trump for years, training him to do his dirty work. Trump still does not get it.
This is a chilling and detailed history of the Soviet Union and EU- the Ukraine and Russia. The history of the countries and their political histories are detailed. And how it affects the USA-how deeply Putin has been able to begin to turn us from a democratic country to a much more vulnerable and easily controlled state of authoritarian rule. He commandeered Trump to be his pony...his boy......to make confusion, rhetoric and fake news become the norm.
Because you can´t change Russia.
But you can try to change the way the rest of the world views your biggest opponent. With Trump in the White House it is that much easier to convince the rest of the world that Russia is not much different than the USA. So Putin is just like us......Russia is innocent. Russia is pure. Its the USA that we should fear.......
Put down ´Fear´ and read this. It actually is a more true and real account of what kind of monster Trump is.
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LibraryThing member thcson
Russian politics has been rotten at the top for as long as anyone can remember. This book is a report on the efforts of the Russian leadership to spread that rot to other countries through war, lies and social media. Reading it was exhausting. So much racism, misogynism, anti-semitism, homophobia
This book gives a good wakeup call to anyone who has underestimated the nature and extent of Russian misinformation, but I think the author's perspective is excessively one-sided. When discussing Ukraine he quotes at length what motorcycle gangs and other minions had to say about it, as if that actually mattered. It's certainly interesting to know that Putin and his immediate lieutenants feed bizarre Jewish-gay-black-conspiracy narratives to the Russian people, but the reception it receives must be more multifaceted than various gang leaders let on. It can't be that hard to find Russians who are critical of the leading junta - even I can name a few off the top of my head. I would have included one or two voices of reason in this book just to show that the rot stops somewhere.
The last chapters of the book deal with the election of Trump - on the one hand, how incredibly much help he received from Russia, and on the other how wide the fault lines of American society already were before Putin got involved. The picture it paints of American politics is akin to Fukuyama's analysis in Political Order and Political Decay: the plutocratic two-party system is not responsive to the needs of its citizens and seems to be broken beyond repair. If Putin's dream really is to generate disunity, political paralysis and disintegration in America, his biggest success stories might yet be to come.
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and stupidity suffuse its pages that all hope for humanity seems to be lost. I'm sure this was the author's intention, and it certainly brings home the essence of Vladimir Putin's legacy to the world. The billions his cronies made from Russian oil seem to have been put to very cost-efficient use in the employment of hackers and trolls for creating strife and influencing elections in Europe and America. This book gives a good wakeup call to anyone who has underestimated the nature and extent of Russian misinformation, but I think the author's perspective is excessively one-sided. When discussing Ukraine he quotes at length what motorcycle gangs and other minions had to say about it, as if that actually mattered. It's certainly interesting to know that Putin and his immediate lieutenants feed bizarre Jewish-gay-black-conspiracy narratives to the Russian people, but the reception it receives must be more multifaceted than various gang leaders let on. It can't be that hard to find Russians who are critical of the leading junta - even I can name a few off the top of my head. I would have included one or two voices of reason in this book just to show that the rot stops somewhere.
The last chapters of the book deal with the election of Trump - on the one hand, how incredibly much help he received from Russia, and on the other how wide the fault lines of American society already were before Putin got involved. The picture it paints of American politics is akin to Fukuyama's analysis in Political Order and Political Decay: the plutocratic two-party system is not responsive to the needs of its citizens and seems to be broken beyond repair. If Putin's dream really is to generate disunity, political paralysis and disintegration in America, his biggest success stories might yet be to come.
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LibraryThing member rmagahiz
This book makes the case that many or most of the declines in openness and freedom over the last three decades in Western Europe and in the United States can be traced by a consistent effort by Vladimir Putin's Russia to spread strife to other nations which are seen as perpetual enemies. The author
The author then focuses on the years between 2010 and 2016 when Putin had consolidated his power as lifetime ruler and has gathered other oligarchical families in Russia and outside. The invasion of Ukraine is part military operation, part cyberwar, and a good deal psyops to the population of Russia. The presentation is not scholarly and there are no guides to primary sources here, so the careful reader would have to do a good deal of fact-checking on their own to verify the dozens or hundreds of incidents covered. There are a few names which recur over and over as fellow travelers with fascistic tendencies hoping to emulate the successes in their own governments. Towards the end of this section come the more or less direct attacks against the political systems of Poland, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. I got the impression that they must have been pleased with the amount of success they have had beyond their wildest dreams in foisting a kleptocratic structure modeled on the Russian oligarchy on America as punishment for our attempts to meddle in their affairs over the past century.
It is a horror story for a person who believes in the old myths about liberal democracy and about its inevitable spread among all nations. It made me angry and outraged that this whole scheme played out so perfectly to Putin's advantage and still somehow left him as something other than an utter pariah in public opinion. Of course the other world leaders do not have the freedom to shun such a dangerous character, and of course there are thousands of Ukrainians who know how the actions on the ground and the embrace of alternative facts came so close to dismembering their entire country, and yet it doesn't seem like there's an enormous reservoir of loathing among Western European and North American citizens at what he has orchestrated over all this time. There have been dangerous strongmen in the past which weren't greeted with a collective shrug. There have been sanctions, but beyond that, it seems like there has been no way to register the kind of revulsion these kinds of authoritarian moves cause in people who still believe in Enlightenment ideals.
I listened to the audiobook version of this and found it maybe even more gripping than it would have been in print. This is a case where the voice of the author add something to the experience of the work; it makes it easier to hear the alarm bells he's ringing, in my opinion. I found it an absorbing work that scared me out of my wits that I would recommend to anyone who would want to be shaken in the same way.
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goes back to the first half of the twentieth century where a man I'd never heard of before, Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin, put together the right-wing counterpart of the Russian Communist philosophies. Ilyin died in the 1950s but was brought back in the 1990s as someone who explained the misfortunes experienced by that country as a kind of contagion by the decadent and evil west which was determined to frustrate the realization of a united Eurasian empire inspired by the kingdom of Kievan Rus in the early Middle Ages centered. The rise of the class of oligarchs found themes in this philosophy which suited the kinds of things they were doing to enhance their personal wealth, much of it revolving around a narrative of endless struggle with outside nations which parallels the class struggle emphasized by the left.The author then focuses on the years between 2010 and 2016 when Putin had consolidated his power as lifetime ruler and has gathered other oligarchical families in Russia and outside. The invasion of Ukraine is part military operation, part cyberwar, and a good deal psyops to the population of Russia. The presentation is not scholarly and there are no guides to primary sources here, so the careful reader would have to do a good deal of fact-checking on their own to verify the dozens or hundreds of incidents covered. There are a few names which recur over and over as fellow travelers with fascistic tendencies hoping to emulate the successes in their own governments. Towards the end of this section come the more or less direct attacks against the political systems of Poland, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. I got the impression that they must have been pleased with the amount of success they have had beyond their wildest dreams in foisting a kleptocratic structure modeled on the Russian oligarchy on America as punishment for our attempts to meddle in their affairs over the past century.
It is a horror story for a person who believes in the old myths about liberal democracy and about its inevitable spread among all nations. It made me angry and outraged that this whole scheme played out so perfectly to Putin's advantage and still somehow left him as something other than an utter pariah in public opinion. Of course the other world leaders do not have the freedom to shun such a dangerous character, and of course there are thousands of Ukrainians who know how the actions on the ground and the embrace of alternative facts came so close to dismembering their entire country, and yet it doesn't seem like there's an enormous reservoir of loathing among Western European and North American citizens at what he has orchestrated over all this time. There have been dangerous strongmen in the past which weren't greeted with a collective shrug. There have been sanctions, but beyond that, it seems like there has been no way to register the kind of revulsion these kinds of authoritarian moves cause in people who still believe in Enlightenment ideals.
I listened to the audiobook version of this and found it maybe even more gripping than it would have been in print. This is a case where the voice of the author add something to the experience of the work; it makes it easier to hear the alarm bells he's ringing, in my opinion. I found it an absorbing work that scared me out of my wits that I would recommend to anyone who would want to be shaken in the same way.
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LibraryThing member rynk
The temptation is to skip to the part about this Russia thing with Trump and Russia. Snyder does a good job using public sources to knit together a narrative on Russian influence and disinformation ("fake news") in the 2016 election. Oligarchs grant favors and name their price later, Snyder
Start at the beginning, though, and take in Snyder's main argument, which sets optimism vs. cynicism in Putin's Russia. The American perspective holds that that equality, cooperation, information and innovation create win-win results. The Russian approach is a power play. Life is hard, so don't let anyone else get the edge. Winning means everyone else loses--or everyone loses, but especially the other guy. If you accept that this is the playbook for fascism, then the U.S.--where oligarchy has other names--is heading quickly down this road.
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suggests, and their dealings with the Trump Organization follow such a pattern. Not everyone will find this argument persuasive, despite the extensive endnotes. Start at the beginning, though, and take in Snyder's main argument, which sets optimism vs. cynicism in Putin's Russia. The American perspective holds that that equality, cooperation, information and innovation create win-win results. The Russian approach is a power play. Life is hard, so don't let anyone else get the edge. Winning means everyone else loses--or everyone loses, but especially the other guy. If you accept that this is the playbook for fascism, then the U.S.--where oligarchy has other names--is heading quickly down this road.
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Publication
Tim Duggan Books (2019), Edition: Reprint, 368 pages
Description
"From the author of On Tyranny comes a stunning new chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism from Russia to Europe and America. With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy was thought to be final. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. This faith was misplaced. Authoritarianism returned to Russia, as Putin found fascist ideas that could be used to justify rule by the wealthy. In the 2010s, it has spread from east to west, aided by Russian warfare in Ukraine and cyberwar and information war in Europe and the United States. Russia found allies among nationalists, oligarchs, and radicals everywhere, and its drive to dissolve Western institutions, states, and values found resonance within the West itself. The rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, but their achievement reveals the vulnerability of Western societies and the uncertain character of Western political order. This fundamental challenge to democracy presents an opportunity to better understand the pillars of our own political order. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, based on vast research as well as personal reporting, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy and law. By revealing the stark choices before us--between equality or oligarchy, individuality or totality, truth and falsehood--Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty"--Provided by publisher.… (more)
Awards
Kirkus Prize (Finalist — Nonfiction — 2018)
Lionel Gelber Prize (Shortlist — 2019)
Boston Globe Best Book (Nonfiction — 2018)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2018-04-03 (1e édtion originale américaine, Tim Duggan Books)
2023-10-26 (1e traduction et édition française, La suite des temps, Gallimard)
Physical description
368 p.; 5.19 inches
ISBN
0525574476 / 9780525574477