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Timothy Snyder explains four major problems for freedom and what these mean for Russia’s war in Ukraine

Photo Credit: Christian Streili

Timothy Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University, delivered the annual Henry Brandon Lecture during Salzburg Global Weekend on June 30, 2023. Since 1994, the Henry Brandon Lecture has taken place at Salzburg Global Seminar in honor of the renowned journalist and author Henry Brandon, whose international relations collection has been housed in Salzburg Global’s library since then.

Read the full transcript of Timothy Snyder's speech here.

Timothy Snyder, an acclaimed historian with expertise in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, lectured on the topic “Democracy on the Front Lines”. He focused on the future of democracy, the meaning of freedom, and the historical and long-term significance of the war in Ukraine. 

In approaching the question of the future of freedom and democracy, Snyder first established that freedom is “the value of values” because it is a “condition in which you are able to make choices among other values and realize those choices.”  He outlined four major problems of freedom for the world today, which he used to share his reflections on the war in Ukraine. 

“Nihilism of both facts and values” is a tremendous problem for freedom because “if freedom is the thing that allows us to make choices among values and there are no values, then there isn't any freedom.” This state of nihilistic indifference can also be called pre-fascism, as “once you get to the point where you are saying that there are no facts and there are no values, you are just one little step from the fascist position… the truth is the same thing as power.” In the war in Ukraine, the enormous scale of lying and propaganda undertaken by the Russians has contributed to this indifference toward facts. Snyder recalled the most interesting part of Yevgeny Prigozhin's June 24 march on Moscow when Prigozhin momentarily told the truth and “allowed us to see that this was always a colonial war, which was always about destroying Ukraine, [and] always about installing a Russian leader.”

Inequality is a challenge for freedom, as it “stops social mobility [and] makes it hard for people to think about the future” in addition to creating clientelism and preventing cooperation across society. Describing Russia as “a country of incredible economic inequality”, Snyder characterized the war in Ukraine as a “war of inequality” and an “oligarchical war”. The wars that Russia undertakes, in Ukraine but also in other places like Syria, are “wars of spectacle abroad” which allow the government to stay in power by drawing citizens’ attention towards external enemies to distract them from domestic issues. 

Snyder’s concept of “futurelessness” occurs when people have no hope for a better future, and it becomes meaningless for them to make free choices or believe in freedom. Additionally, “when there is no future, a certain myth of the past rushes in to fill the gap.” These historical myths can dangerously distort a country’s self-image and have contributed to Russia’s misguided justification for its war in Ukraine. The Russian political leadership, including Putin, does not talk about the future and is instead guided by the sense that “it's all about the past. It's all about things repeating themselves.” In stark contrast, “the Ukrainian discussion of this war is almost entirely about the future. It's about getting through this to that world we were supposed to have.” In explaining this, Snyder pointed to the generational difference between the Russian and Ukrainian leadership, as those in power in Russia are around the age of 70 while those leading Ukraine are closer to 40. He blames the older Russian generation, as they have “crushed the next generation” and continue to do so by sending their young citizens to die “senselessly” in Ukraine. 

Empire poses problems for freedom, as the last several hundred years of history have involved colonialism where “freedom generally means an exploitative condition in which I am free because I can get you to do stuff for me.” Russia’s war on Ukraine shows similar logic to the past three centuries of colonial war, particularly by denying the legitimacy of the Ukrainian people and state, placing blame for Ukraine’s existence on an “international conspiracy”, and pursuing racially motivated demographic changes. Critiquing Russian tactics, Snyder observed that “when [Russia] invaded Ukraine, they said ‘There’s not really a state there’, and when it turned out there was a state and there was a people, then the next move was to say, ‘Well, it's an international conspiracy.’ Depending on what social media channels you follow, that international conspiracy is NATO and EU and Americans, or it's the Jews.” 

According to Snyder, the most important thing to understand about empires is that they must lose their last imperial war. He urged Europeans against giving peace to Russia, saying that the Russian empire would instead have to be defeated in Ukraine, as “the idea of victory is very important for freedom”. To this point, Snyder reminded his audience that “the reason the European Union could come about is because the Europeans lost their colonial wars.” In the case of Europe, “European empire ended as European integration started” and for Ukraine, it should be “more like the story of what happens to other post-imperial states… Freedom for Ukraine involves these moral issues. It involves a sense of the future.”

Snyder praised the “human courage” and “moral commitment” in the Ukrainian resistance, encouraging Ukrainian civil society, government, and European countries to work towards making Ukraine free. He left the audience contemplating how to achieve “a non-exploitive idea of freedom, not just because the Ukrainians need it, but because we all need it.”

Read the full transcript of Timothy Snyder's speech here.