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A year ago, Russia invaded Ukraine, destroying a peaceful order in Europe and placing its own regime at risk. We in the West have experienced this historical turning point through a haze of propaganda. According to Snyder, the Kremlin was perhaps wrong about the political weakness of Ukraine but likely right about some intellectual weaknesses of Americans and Europeans. When will the war end? This rare pairing of two essential thinkers on Eastern European politics offers a revelatory look at why what happens in Ukraine is of significant international importance.
Timothy Snyder is the Bird White Housum Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of five award-winning books. His 2010 book, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, was selected as the best book of the year by The Economist, The New Republic, and The Guardian and received a number of honors, including the Leipzig Prize for European Understanding and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award in the Humanities.
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist and the author of seven books, including the international bestseller The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and, most recently, The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, to be published in April. She writes regularly for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, and other publications. She was born in Moscow, educated in the United States, and spent most of her adult life in Russia before immigrating to America again just over a year ago.
Justinian Jampol is Founder and Executive Director of the Wende Museum. His work focuses on visual cultural studies and the connection between contemporary art and Cold War iconography. The curator of several exhibitions, Jampol has also produced two documentary films on the Cold War, as well as urban art programs, including The Wall Project. His work has been featured in The Atlantic, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, andThe New York Times. He is the author of Beyond the Wall: Art and Artifacts from the GDR, published by Taschen in December 2014.
