Topography of Interpretation: Reviewing Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands

Abstract

Timothy Snyder's book on the conjoint, albeit opposing synergy between German National Socialism and Soviet Stalinism at the high point of the Second World War, and situated in the context of the East European lands lying between them, is tellingly, in a sense almost emblematically, entitled Bloodlands. The neologism that Snyder coined is a synthetic appellation for the murderous dynamics that unfolded there. Titles generally intend to lead the reader towards the book's core thesis, and this coinage seems, perhaps more than is usual, to be of special importance to the author.