The Tymothy Snyder's book "The Road to Unfreedom" is scary because it draws lines between seemingly unconnected events that point to a single cause of major recent political instability around the globe and an underpinning vision behind it. That vision is Russia’s, or, more properly, Russia seen through the neo-fascist lens of early 20th century ideologue Ivan Ilyin and his current champion Vladimir Putin. From the invasion of Crimea to BREXIT and the heavily abetted election of Donald Trump Snyder finds one common precipitating idea: the rejection of liberal democracy in favour of xenophobic autocracy. As an academic who champions progress through diversity and openness Snyder himself is an example of what distresses Putin’s Russia, itself an incarnation of what Snyder calls Eternity, a mindset that sees the world in an unchanging quasi-religious way, with Russia as a bleeding martyr of western assaults. It is binarily opposed, in Snyder’s vision, to the Inevitability mantra he understands as the common view of western culture, a belief in advancement through change. Since Russia cannot change, in Snyder’s interpretation of the Eternity view, its only available reward is “to make others weaker”(p. 269).
This is a bleak view and the rise of similar gangster leaders and their tactics around the world in recent times gives it credibility. The question for Snyder and for others opposed to the application of any kind of theologically entwined pessimism inworld affairs is, then, what to do about this movement to un-freedom? As ever, Poland finds itself in the eye of a geo-historical storm, squeezed between east and west. The Russian fifth column electronic media are active in Poland as elsewhere, sewing seeds of confusion. For historical reasons, as part of the former “Eastern Bloc”, like Ukraine, Poland finds itself anatural, if reluctant, part of what can be seen, with Snyder, as akind of Eastern Bloc restoration plan. The “blockage”, of course, is the never to be forgotten historical victimization of Poland by the Soviet Union, from which flows Polish President Kaczynski’s nationalist politics. With friends like Putin Poles may think, who needs enemies?
