Opinion by Timothy Snyder: You can’t understand the war in Ukraine without knowing history
As logic, this is circular; and as politics, it is tyrannical. If I can claim that Canadians are Americans because they speak the same language, or because we share a common history, that would strike us as an idiotic reason to order an invasion. When a dictator claims the power to define other people’s identity, then the question of their own freedom never arises. If identity is frozen forever at the whim of a ruler, citizens soon find themselves without choices.
As we observe where this logic led Russians, we begin to question the validity of such stories. But it shouldn’t have taken such an obvious atrocity for us to doubt. Until recently, far too many commentators were happy to go along with Putin: Russia and Ukraine were somehow eternally alike, people who spoke Russia were somehow Russians, culture as defined by a dictator was destiny.It was surreal in a different way when millions of people joined my class online.
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