Below are excerpts from a post by Tim Snyder, historian and author of On Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom, among other books. He wrote this a few weeks ago while riding on an overnight train from Kyiv to a city in the southeast of Ukraine which is about twenty miles from the line that separates a Russian occupied part of Ukraine.
He muses about how he was heading toward a line that separates different ways of life.
On this, the Ukrainian side of the line, people lead completely different lives than under Russian occupation or in Russia. Ukrainians say what they want, including about the war and about politics. Journalists cover the war and write about politics. There is fear, although less than you might think; but it is fear of bombs and missiles and violence from Russia, not of denunciations or oppression or of one’s own government. I have the strange feeling, this week in Kyiv, that Ukrainians are living freer lives now than Americans. At a bookstore where I was talking to a Ukrainian philosopher about freedom, a young woman put her hand on my arm and said “sorry about the U.S.” . . .
But I have in mind something deeper: the transformation of our public and private lives. As in Russia, we have let local newspapers and local media die. As in Russia, their place was taken by a few commercial operations. As in Russia, the media are owned by oligarchs, who then become close to government or submit to it (not all of the media in America, of course, are submitting, but far too many are). As in Russia, our daily lives are flooded by such a rushing river of contradictory lies that we have trouble knowing where we are, let alone what we should do. As in Russia, a president supported by oligarchs and their media power is trying to humiliate the other branches of government. The executive is seeking to marginalize the legislature — forever — by ruling without passing laws. The executive is seeking to marginalize the judiciary — forever — by ignoring court rulings. Those things, of course, have already happened in Russia.
The Russian government rejoices in such changes in the U.S., and has a hand in them. But the problem is not Russia. The problem is us. It is as though we have boarded a train without thinking about the destination. The windows are shaded, and the conductors have purposes of their own, which have nothing to do with our dignity, rights, or humanity. I worry that we will not see that line approaching, that no one will get out, that no one will stop the train.
I am one American in a train at night in a foreign country at war, heading in the direction of the front, going to a city that is attacked by Russia. But I know that I won’t be crossing any lines. It is nearing midnight, and aside from the sound of the wheels on the rails, all is calm. I know where this train will stop. I am traveling with people I know, visiting people I trust, aiming to do something that makes sense — helping to celebrate the opening of an underground school in Zaporizhzhia (Russia targets schools with missiles, and so they must go underground, in a literal sense). As I close my tablet and go to sleep, I am safer than every single one of you reading this in the United States, and indeed safer than I would be in the United States. My train will stop in five hours. But America will keep hurtling.