I wasn’t going to read Snyder’s Black Earth because I did not expect it to tell me anything new about the Holocaust. But then I read a pissy review of the book and realized that only something very good could provoke such a fit of poutiness in a reviewer. So I bought the book and can now tell you that this is probably the best thing I read this year. I hate wasting my time on books that tell me what I already know. Black Earth told me something new on every page and surprised me more than I could have expected.
This book on the Holocaust is in reality a passionate ode to the state. It is common to equate the destruction of the state with freedom, Snyder says. History teaches us, however, that the exact opposite is true. In order to be able to murder 6 million Jews, Hitler had to destroy the nation-states in half of Europe.
In the places where the state was preserved in 1939-45, few Jews were killed. Where the state was compromised, more Jews were killed. In the areas where the state was destroyed, most Jews were killed. And in the region where the state was destroyed twice, all Jews were killed.
There is no reason to believe, Snyder points out, that we are all that different from the 1941 Germans. We are as enamored of apocalyptic visions, as distrustful of science, as prone to blame the state, and as incapable of feeling content with our standard of living as they were. And the state today is weakened. As in Hitler’s times, the regions where the state is weakest (Africa or the Middle East) are the ones where human life is most at risk.
This is, of course, a briefest summary of a volume that brims with insights, analysis, ideas, and knowledge. Climate change, war in Iraq, Putin’s alternative to Hitler’s concept of “the Jewish lobby”, the analysis of what characteristic European Christians had to possess to be more likely to help Jews during the Holocaust – all these subjects and many more are brought together in an elegant, meaningful, and absorbing narrative.
In terms of the writing style, the book is structured around numerous repetitions that seem to strive to anchor the ideas Snyder introduces to prevent them from being swept away by the flow that is eroding and battering the very nation-state model that Hitler was so eager to destroy.
Clarissa's Blog 
Now I want to see the “pissy review” :)))))))))))))
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Here it is but I warn you that it is very poorly written.
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An awful lot of people don’t like Snyder. In part this is because he is an outsider to the field of Holocaust Studies. His background is in the history of East Central Europe, particularly the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Polish-Ukrainian relations. But, I think his outsiderness is a good thing. Right now I am working on a piece that draws heavily on Eric Weitz’s 2002 article (the only one ever written on the subject) on the development of what he calls “racial politics” in the USSR under Stalin with regards to the national deportations. Almost without exception all US scholars of the USSR led by Francine Hirsch and Amir Weiner rejected the idea that there was ever any racial component to any of Stalin’s policies towards the deported peoples. But, what allowed Weitz to see through what people who took Soviet pronouncements in the archives at face value could not was the fact that he was not trained as an historian of the USSR. His research has mostly been on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
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“But, I think his outsiderness is a good thing.”
I’m talking specifically about the scholarship on the USSR done in the US, of course. People in other geographic regions seem to be doing a much better job. What you do in your scholarship is very refreshing, there is some good stuff done in the UK, etc.
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I have noticed that as well. Most of the good scholars of the USSR writing in English have a UK connection rather than a US one. Hosking, Service, the late Conquest just to name the first three off the top of my head. Snyder did his postgraduate work in the UK at Oxford. Also, unlike most US based scholars he answered the e-mail I sent him. So I have a personal bias towards him.
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