Bloodlands Author Timothy Snyder Speaks in Toronto and Montreal 

Timothy Snyder, author of the recently published book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, will be speaking in Toronto on January 26 (7-9 pm) at St. Vladimir Institute, and on January 27 (4-6 pm) at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, as well as in Montreal on January 28 (7-9 pm) at McGill University.

In Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Prof. Snyder offers a groundbreaking investigation of the place where Europeans were murdered by the millions. The bloodlands extend from central Poland to western Russia and encompass Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic States. The time period covered includes the years 1933-1938 of the Holodomor and the Terror in the Soviet Union and the consolidation of National Socialist power in Germany; the joint German-Soviet occupation of Poland and Western Ukraine in 1939-1941 and the German-Soviet war (1941-1945) when mass violence never before seen in history was visited on this region. The victims were peoples native to these lands - Jews, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, Russians and Balts, and Professor Snyder shows that they were victims of murderous policy rather than the casualties of war.

“Many of the stories in the book are already known as national or ethnic tragedies. Poles focus on the Warsaw Uprising; Jews on Auschwitz; Russians on the Siege of Leningrad; Ukrainians on the Great Famine. Prof. Snyder’s book weaves the stories together, explaining how the horrors interacted and reinforced each other. Hitler learnt a lot from Stalin, and vice versa.” (The Economist, October 14, 2010)

 “WWII continues to be perceived through a narrow Western perspective, and many basic problems about the war of 1939-1945 remain unresolved. In Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder examines the little known tract of the European continent that was scourged by Stalin as well as Hitler, and reaches some disturbing conclusions... This is a book which will force its readers to rethink history.” (Historian Norman Davies).

Prof. Snyder’s visit to Canada is sponsored by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, together with the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter Initiative, the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre, the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in Canada, and the Canadian Association for Polish Studies.

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. Basic Books; 524 pages; $29.95.
Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre

PHOTO

Timothy Snyder