The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

Yale history professor Snyder (On Tyranny) buttresses his denunciation of Donald Trump as a nascent authoritarian with a fascinating, detailed exploration of how recent events in Russia presaged Trump’s administration. Beginning by discussing the obscure early-20th-century Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin, who regarded “fascism as the politics of the world to come,” Snyder traces Ilyin’s influence on Vladimir Putin’s aggressive efforts to return his country to superpower status. Those included the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, which Snyder considers “the warning that went unheeded” of Russia’s willingness to interfere with other countries’ political systems, as later seen during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He relates Ilyin’s belief that strong rulers favor self-serving myths over empirical evidence to numerous examples of the Putin regime’s propaganda. In perhaps its most audacious PR coup, Russia’s downing of a Malaysia Airlines flight over Ukraine was spun so successfully that well over 80% of Russians believed their country wasn’t to blame. This instance of “alternative facts” will resonate with many Trump opponents, as will Snyder’s dissection of the leadership style of oligarchs, both Russian and American. His work achieves its stated goal of conveying the relationship among “interconnected events in our own contemporary world history” and will be a must-read for those concerned about democracy’s safety in the 21st century. Agent: Tina Bennett, WME. (Apr.)