After the war, Ukrainians will only be able to coexist with Russians if the occupiers admit they lost, said Timothy Snyder, a distinguished American historian, an expert on Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust, a Professor of History at Yale University, in an interview with LIGA.net.
“I think living with Russia after the war is primarily a matter of Russia understanding that it has lost the war. The war needs to end in a way that Russians know it is over. And unfortunately, that is not the same as just a ceasefire or a truce. Russians must know that they’ve lost. With such a Russia, perhaps Ukraine can coexist,” said Snyder.
Ukraine’s image has drastically changed over the past two and a half years. “I think, for most people in the world, Ukraine was something that didn’t exist. Something they didn’t think about one way or the other. The main change is that now almost no one doubts that Ukraine is a sovereign country, capable of achieving certain things in the world,” added the historian.
Today, Ukraine is culturally present in the world in a way it wasn’t 10 or 20 years ago. “There is also a certain interest in Ukrainian culture, both pop culture and high culture, which we like to talk about. Ukraine is also viewed as a democratic country, which, of course, would have been far more doubted 20 years ago than it is now,” Snyder continued.
However, it’s important to debunk Russian myths. “The entire method by which we teach the history of Eastern Europe is based on a Russian imperial construct. From California to Germany, we’ve essentially been teaching history based on the notion that what happened in Kyiv and Rus’ 1,000 years ago is somehow today’s Russia. And we need to break free from that,” emphasized the historian.
Therefore, it’s much more important not just to debunk myths, but to fill the space with an engaging version of Ukrainian history. “I know it’s difficult because Russians have more money and communication channels, and they are trying to destroy Ukraine. So it’s natural to be on the defensive. But part of the work I’m trying to do here in Kyiv now with a project called ‘Ukrainian History: A Global Initiative’ is to show that Ukrainian history is much broader than Ukraine, much broader than Russia, that it’s connected to practically everything important in European and world history, and to engage people that way. Not just counter falsehoods, but engage people with a much richer and more interesting version of the truth,” Snyder concluded.
The full interview is available at the link.
Cover: open sources
