@AlexandreEremenko, back to Snyder. First of all, everyone has bias and no one is "the mostest honestest historian of them all". I implore you, remove your blinders, read and think critically. And in full. I spend half the time here repeating and clarifying things you did not read, or did not read carefully before commenting on them. Read what I wrote to SJuan first.

Now, here is couple quotes from the review of Bloodlands in Haaretz, a Jewish publication:

> In that respect, Snyder’s unfortunate downplaying of the significance of the role played by Eastern European Nazi war criminals and Holocaust collaborators, which barely distinguishes between local victims and native perpetrators and ignores the enormous number of those who volunteered to murder their neighbors and other Jews ‏(and did so in many cases with zealous cruelty‏),

> In summation, I can only express a sense of frustration and sorrow that a historian of Snyder’s stature and obvious talent, who clearly recognizes the dangers of the exploitation of history, has written a book that, while innovative and monumental, will ultimately be misused by those intent on distorting the annals of the worst tragedy in human history.

@theUg, @AlexandreEremenko Just to be clear, I find Russian actions in Ukraine completely illegal and unjustified, and a dangerous breach of the principle of not using military force to change the frontiers. That said, claiming that "70 years ago X happenned" as an explanation/analogy to current political events is an extremely poor and dishonest argument, unless you can provide a sufficient explanation of such analogy.

@AlexandreEremenko, if this is not a good argument against his bias, I do not know what is.

It is such a poor argument, that allows the other side to use the same tactic for the opposite conclussion: v.g. Russia has been invaded by "the west" (Napoleon, Crimea, WWI, Russian Civil War, WWII) numerous times in the past and needs some buffer space to wear down invaders. Of course, Russia apologists will also (as Snyder does) cherry pick the "facts" that suits their explanations/analogies and forget the rest.

This is why I claim that article (and others like that) are dishonest and a complete joke. To put another example, I recently read an opinion article from a Polish writer (don't remember its name, sorry), telling that Russia's Nobility was descendent from Mongol garrisons stablished by the Golden Horde and that, due to that, the country was"asiatic" and "incapable of democracy"

(change "incapable of democracy" for "subhuman" and the tune sounds quite familiar...)

@SJuan76, I concur with you on that, and as you had said, there is a ripe field of counter-whataboutism. For instance, the West cries about Crimea, but had no qualms about accepting Turkey, country that forcibly occupied sovereign Cyprus in 1974, and whose civil rights record could be arguably worse than Putin's. Which shows that West practises the same realpolitik, but uses so-called values as a smokescreen.

Again, not claiming that the situation is better "in the other side" (i.e., Russian articles), but anyone following a forum to learn from history should recognize the old "deshumanize the enemy" tricks and not fall for them even if that suits their agenda.

I don't even go to the Russian side. I argue the Western war party with Western sources. Everything I quote everywhere is Western MSM or Western established academics. It is just Cold Warriors are so oblivious to reason, it is frustrating.

Well, if it gives you some comfort, and least now a) we have some information and b) even if most people do not care, those who do can think and talk about that. There has been few times (if any) in History when this could have been done.

And well... most people really do not care a lot, just follow some "folklore" they inherited. Recently in Spain the police arrested a few people who had joined the pro-Russian militias. The catch is that they were doing so because of communist simpaties, because in their "folklore" Russia was communist, and that was enough.

Haha, well, the legacy of the Spanish Civil War lives on. It is hard to whole-heartedly to pick a side (Hemingway scathingly denounced both after being disillusioned), but there is still that romance of supporting the Republic against Franco that is nurtured in Russia.

@AlexandreEremenko, here is another academic review by William W. Hagen from University of California, Davis. By: Hagen, William W. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. Spring2012, Vol. 30 Issue 3, p178-181. 4p. Abstract: A review of the book "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin," by Timothy Snyder, is presented. (AN: 77930944)

I got to it for free through my university library via EBSCO DB, but here is the entry in WorldCat: worldcat.org/title/…

> The affinity between Snyder's and Nolte's theses might discomfit, but his question is legitimate. He cites Nazi-encouraged willingness in 1941 among inhabitants of the previously Soviet-ruled "bloodlands" to stage pogroms against local Jewish populations, and their subsequent passive toleration or active support of Nazi exterminism.

> This Snyder attributes to "psychic nazification," resulting from exposure to Soviet violence—terroristic imprisonment, deportations, mass shootings, class-targeted famine (p. 196)—ascribable in both Nazi and east European antisemitic discourse to "Jewish Bolshevism."

> But a massive caveat looms against any argument that exposure to Soviet practice triggered Nazi genocide: already in fall 1939, in Nazi-occupied western and central Poland, public mass murder commenced of civilians, the victims numbering in the tens of thousands. This was the work both of the German army and the newly unleashed SS "task forces" (Einsatzgruppen), targeting the Polish population, including Jews.

> When in 1941 the Nazi occupation of the formerly Soviet-held "bloodlands" commenced, German soldiers and policemen in occupied eastern Europe were psychically acclimated to mass murder, without having had first-hand experience of Stalinist violence. This inescapable fact undercuts the causal significance Snyder attributes to the German encounter with Soviet communism.

There appears to be a trove of scholarly criticism of Snyder. Many arguing his tendentiousness (i.e. bias). For instance, in more places than one I had noticed his treatment of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in particular is being chastised.

In "Bloodlands" he defended Polish Home Army decision not to supply weapons to Warsaw Jews as it was an "unfortunate timing" and was a Communist trap to eliminate future Polish resistance. At the same time, Jews, with their backs against the wall, were just supposed to curl up and die?