Drat, I was sorry to miss Tim Snyder speaking tonight, I thought by answering yes, Im going on Facebook that was good enough, turns out there was some invitation RSVP site you had to also access -- and now its sold out. If anyone goes, one question I think he should be asked is whether he has worked with Memorial Society of Russia. I see no footnotes, no reference, nothing about Memorial in his book The Bloodlands. And I personally think it suffers as a result, and he has undercounted victims of Stalin as a result. I checked on a just a few things, like numbers of people massacred just in Moscow, etc. and Memorial, which is very scrupulously documented, has many more victims -- not some huge amount more, but when each incident is taken and tallied, the result is that it starts to challenge his philosophy of equivalence. I dont think he reads Russian or has studied any Russian archives. I know that pro-Kremlin types (like Natalia Antonova who is vicious about Snyder on Twitter) criticize him in the other direction, that he is too kind to Ukrainians. And we all definitely appreciate his work in debunking the Ukrainian fascist narrative. Ive learned a lot from this book. But I remain decidedly troubled by the lack of original Russian research reflected in it. Maybe someone from Memorial can comment. Cherkasov Alexander
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 23:09:22 +0000
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