Putin has been systematically building just such a state. Snyder argues, with much supporting evidence, that Mr. He became a proponent of fascism and Nazism, envisioning a Russian fascist state with a totalitarian ruler. Putin, we learn from Professor Snyder, was influenced by a Russian writer named Ivan Ilyin who, after the Bolshevik Revolution, became a counter-revolutionary, was exiled, and lived in Germany and Switzerland. The author, a professor of history at Yale, is an expert in recent Russian history, and most of the book is a riveting description of the ways in which Vladimir Putin has manipulated the minds of his people to get them to accept and support his kleptocratic government and his expansionist ambitions. I found it extremely interesting and informative. Finally a colleague, an emeritus professor of history, recommended this book to me. I have been asking my liberal and progressive friends for some time to recommend to me a book of political philosophy that argues for their ideas, but I have not gotten a single recommendation and was beginning to wonder whether all those intelligent and highly-educated people were reading anything more serious and thoughtful than the latest screed by Paul Krugman in the New York Times. The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, by Timothy Snyder (353 pages, Tim Duggan Books, 2018) In “The Road to Unfreedom,” Timothy Snyder speaks for them in bemoaning the fact that the founders created not a direct democracy but a republic. After the shock of the 2016 election, liberals got a civics lesson on the electoral college established by the Constitution, and they didn’t like it.
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