ABSTRACT

Timothy Snyder, a Yale professor of history, has written a book on Eastern Europe and the holocaust, which has created a stir well beyond the circle of specialists. It has been translated into eighteen languages. Snyder feels that the suffering of Eastern Europe during the World War Two has not been paid sufficient attention, whereas the holocaust, the murder of the Jews, has been singled out and documented in very great detail. Millions were killed or starved to death in the "Bloodlands". But the fate of European Jews was still unique in some crucial respects; Snyder and some others find it difficult to fully accept this. In Bloodlands, he has provided the Polish Ukrainian version of events in Eastern Europe. This was a necessary, long overdue endeavor and praise is due to the author. But it is certainly not, as he suggests, the first postnationalist work.