Reviews tagging 'Cannibalism'
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder
2 reviews
aehc's review
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
Bloodlands is profoundly disturbing, as any book that seriously addresses this topic must be. Snyder points out in his afterword that the mass killing in eastern Europe is "over-theorized and under researched," and he sticks to that premise: this is a book that seeks to establish facts first and foremost, which I appreciated. So many books that deal with the Holocaust, the Eastern front of WWII, and Soviet repression seek to establish a "why" - I think this is a natural impulse given the horror - without first elucidating the facts. Snyder actually does very little theorizing in the body of the book, and simply lays out the bare facts: from 1930 to 1950, about 14 million people in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states were killed through deliberate governmental policies. 6 million of them were Jews or of Jewish heritage. Snyder's deliberate, methodical accounting is frankly more horrifying than any amount of theorizing because the facts themselves are so unimaginably grotesque. He very effectively weaves in stories of people victimized in order to remind us that these atrocities did not claim 14 million dead, but "14 million times one" - that each of these numbers represents an individual life. He also makes a strong case that the interactions between two violent an utopian systems created conditions which amplified each of their destructive impulses.
Only once Snyder has established his facts does he, in a deeply affecting and effective conclusion, lay out his reasoning for studying this period. He makes a strikingly effective case that dismissal of the perpetrators and collaborators as inhuman distracts from their very human, and very repeatable actions. How do we stop things like this from happening again? It isn't simply remembering, but critically examining why people did what they did and the structures which created the conditions. In order to understand why, we must first understand how.
Only once Snyder has established his facts does he, in a deeply affecting and effective conclusion, lay out his reasoning for studying this period. He makes a strikingly effective case that dismissal of the perpetrators and collaborators as inhuman distracts from their very human, and very repeatable actions. How do we stop things like this from happening again? It isn't simply remembering, but critically examining why people did what they did and the structures which created the conditions. In order to understand why, we must first understand how.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, War, Violence, Misogyny, Hate crime, Torture, Xenophobia, Deportation, Colonisation, Mass/school shootings, Police brutality, Antisemitism, and Death
Minor: Cannibalism, Sexual assault, and Rape
justinreist's review
dark
informative
slow-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Classism, War, Xenophobia, Religious bigotry, Gun violence, Colonisation, Violence, Racism, Mass/school shootings, Child death, Antisemitism, Rape, Sexual violence, Murder, Genocide, Death, and Cannibalism
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