Timothy Snyder
(USA, 1969) is a internationally leading historian specialising in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the Holocaust. The professor of History at Yale University has published influential studies such as Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (2008); Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), Thinking the Twentieth Century (with Tony Judt, 2012); Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015); On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017); and The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018) and the highly topical On Freedom (2024).
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Archive available for: Timothy Snyder
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Freedom: interview with Timothy Snyder
With: Sophie Derkzen, Timothy Snyder
Historian Timothy Snyder is world-renowned for his books on tyranny and Eastern Europe. His latest book is about how freedom is at stake. On Saturday afternoon 25 January 2025, Sophie Derkzen interviews him at the Writers Unlimited International Literature Festival The Hague about his book On Freedom.
On Freedom is the equally brilliant and highly topical new book by the renowned Yale historian and author of the bestsellers Bloodlands and On Tyranny, among others.
What is freedom? Why is our freedom at risk? And why is freedom our only chance of survival? Freedom is the core of our Western world, the heart of our democracy, but we have lost sight of what it means, resulting in crisis.
Too many people see freedom as the absence of state power. We think we are free when we can do and say what we want and are hindered as little as possible by the state. But real freedom is not so much freedom from as freedom to - to thrive, to put things on the line for a future we choose and work for together.
Timothy Snyder is a internationally leading historian specialising in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the Holocaust. The professor of History at Yale University has published influential studies such as Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (2008); Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), Thinking the Twentieth Century (with Tony Judt, 2012); Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015); On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017); The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018) and the highly topical On Freedom (2024).
Sophie Derkzen is a journalist and presenter with a fascination for international politics and culture. On Dutch national broadcaster NPO Radio 1 she presents Bureau Buitenland for VPRO, awarded the prestigious Silver Reiss Microphone for best radio programme of the year in 2022. She made the podcasts Stad in Oorlog: Charkiv een jaar onder vuur (City at War: Kharkiv one year under fire; winner Silver Reiss Microphone 2023) and Generatie Merkel (4**** in de Volkskrant).
Interview with Timothy Snyder has been curated for Writers Unlimited Festival by Ilonka Reintjens.
Festival tip 1: Timothy Snyder, Andrej Koerkov and Lisa Weeda talk about wartime writing during Saturday Night Unlimited (25 January from 20:00 at Theater aan het Spui and Filmhuis Den Haag) in the subprogramme Writing in Times of War.Festival tip 2: for the full festival experience, go to the grand festival events Friday Night Unlimited (24 January) and Saturday Night Unlimited (25 January)! Both nights you choose your own route along some 20 performances, readings and conversations on five stages in Theater aan het Spui and Filmhuis Den Haag. English and Dutch spoken.
Festivaltip 3: as Writers Unlimited presents its literature festival for 30 years, we celebrate this anniversary with Playing with Fire, a show full of music, dance and literature at Amare (Danstheater) on Sunday afternoon, 26 January. You will see and hear Spinvis, Shirma Rouse, XILLAN, Babs Gons, Joost Oomen, Zaïre Krieger, Claudia Karapanou Flamenco Trio, Royal Conservatoire Dance and percussion group Pulse led by Eli Wing, among others. Book now! Tickets are 11 euros (under 29s or students), or 16 - 35 euros (depending on seat chosen). Note: Dutch spoken.
From 23 to 26 January 2025, Writers Unlimited International Literature Festival The Hague is to be found in theatres, libraries and schools throughout the city: from Theater aan het Spui, Filmhuis Den Haag, Amare and Paard to Theater Dakota, Theater De Vaillant, the Laakkwartier, Nieuw Waldeck, Schilderswijk and Ypenburg libraries, the Institute of Social Studies and De Haagse Hogeschool. With over 120 writers, poets and spoken-word artists and musicians from the Netherlands and abroad. With readings, prose, poetry, storytelling, spoken word, author interviews, topical talks, films and music.
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Book of My Life: Timothy Snyder in conversation with Charlotte Remarque
Writers tell us about their favourite book: the book that inspires or touches them, that set their artistic, moral or intellectual compass. In short, the book they would recommend to everyone. Interview: Charlotte Remarque.
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Writing in Times of War
Timothy Snyder, renowned American historian specialising in the history of Central and Central Europe, opens Writing in Times of War with a mini-lecture on the Russian attack on Ukraine.
Writers Andrei Kurkov, Timothy Snyder and Lisa Weeda then explore in conversation with Eva Hartog, using their own work and the work of their fellow writers, what it means to write about and in times of war. Is language adequate, does language offer comfort and is language the best medium to tell the world about the situation in a war zone? Is fiction sometimes necessary to describe the facts?
Timothy Snyder is an internationally leading historian specialising in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the Holocaust. The professor of History at Yale University has published influential studies such as Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (2008); Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), Thinking the Twentieth Century (with Tony Judt, 2012); Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015); On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017); and The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018) and the highly topical On Freedom (2024).
Andrei Kurkov is a Ukrainian writer famous for the mix of harsh realism and absurdist humour in his novels and non fiction books. He was born in Leningrad, grows up in Kyiv and writes in Russian and Ukrainian. His works have been translated in 37 languages and were published in 65 countries. He is a respected commentator on the situation in his country. In The President's Last Love, Kurkov employs humour and cynicism to describe how a boy manages to work his way up to become the most powerful man in the country. Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev, his eyewitness account of political unrest in the Ukraine, was published in 2014. Dairy of an Invasion (2022) and Our daily war (2024) are collections of Kurkov's writings and broadcasts as well as a remarkable record of a brilliant writer at the forefront of a 21st-century war. In 2024, he published The Silver Bone, the first part of The Kyiv Mysteries, his series of crime novels in historical settings. The second part The Stolen Heart will be published in 2025; the third part The Public Sauna Case is in development.
LIsa Weeda writes prose, plays and non-fiction. Her chapbook De benen van Petrovski (Petrovski's Legs), a literary account of her trip to the Ukraine, where her grandmother comes from and a large part of her family still lives, was published in 2016. Her debut novel Aleksandra was published in 2021. In it, her grandmother is the hub of the story. She sends main character Lisa to the Donbas to search for her uncle Kolja. The novel, grimly topical due to the war in Ukraine, encompasses in a maelstrom of dreams and nightmares both the history of a country and a family. Weeda has published work in De Revisor, Tirade, Das Magazin, De Titaan and De Optimist. In 2024 she published her novel Dans dans revolutie (Dance, dance, revolution).
Eva Hartog is a Dutch-Russian journalist who worked in Russia for ten years. Hartog studied Political Philosophy at the Leiden University. She was the editor-in-chief of the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times from 2017 to 2019. As a correspondent for publications such as De Groene Amsterdammer, she lived and worked in Moscow until her visa was not renewed in 2023. Now, she is a journalist for Politico where she publishes about Russia and about autocratic tendencies across the globe.
Writing in Times of War is curated for Writers Unlimited Festival 2025 by Ilonka Reintjens.
