Opowieść o nieuwikłanych ziemiach

Abstract

Narrative of untangled lands Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands is an extremely ambitious project not only of historiography but also, we dare say, of historiosophy. Snyder seeks originality in shaping both the geography and the narrative of what he considers to be the central occurrence of contemporary history – mass killings of the Nazi regime and Stalinist Russia. He claims that in order to comprehend the logic of the killings we need to put emphasis on the (intentional and unintentional) collusion (interaction) of the two regimes. I believe that this interpretation is trivial if we take its weak interpretation, and wrong if we want to understand it in a strong way. Snyder is widely praised for adopting or giving justice to the Central European (namely Polish) perception of the WWII, but in doing it he gladly succumbs to its lacunas and deliberate misinterpretations. He not only downgrades the importance of the Shoah but also downplays the role of Eastern European anti-Semitism and its interaction with the Nazi “messianic” anti-judaismus as the key factor in successful execution of the Final Solution.