This essay draws from lectures delivered at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Wellesley College, the Fritt Ord Foundation in Oslo, and the Visual Culture Research Center in Kyiv.

1 On the actual course of events I wrote about forty articles and gave about twenty lectures, in Ukraine and abroad, some of which can be found at http://timothysnyder.org/Ukraine/ (last accessed July 28,2015).

2 An excellent first-person discussion of the prehistory of the war propaganda is Pomerantsev, Peter, Nothingls True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (New York, 2014)Google Scholar, which introduces well his report with Michael Weiss, “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money,” Interpreter, with the Institute of Modern Russia, November 22, 2014, at http://http:www.interpretermag.com/the-menace-of-unreality-how-the-kremlin-weaponizes-information-culture-and-money/ (last accessed June 1, 2015). A valuable Russian perspective on American syndromes of interpretation is Nikolay Koposov, “Back to Yalta? Stephen Cohen and the Ukrainian Crisis,“ Eurozine, Septembers, 2014, at http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-09-05-koposov-en.html (last accessed June 1, 2015); in Russian as Nikolai Koposov, “Ha3afl K AJITIIHCKOM CHCTeine? CTMBCH KOSH H yKpanHCKHM KPM3MC,” Tecpmep, October 3, 2014, at http://gefter.ru/archive/13198 (last accessed June 1,2015).

3 On attempts to integrate global and European history by rethinking colonization, see Mazower, Mark, Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (London, 2008)Google Scholar; Sebastian Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, Eng., 2010); and Alexander Etkind, Internal Colonization (Cambridge, Eng., 2011).

4 The move here is not to apply postcolonial theory to eastern Europe but rather to insert eastern Europe into the history of colonialism, which would then require a rethinking of the postcolonial canon. Bloxham, Donald helpfully connects Ottoman and German themes to the history of colonization in The Final Solution: A Genocide (Oxford, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Holly Case demonstrates how an apparently Balkan muddle of memory can be presented as a highly reflective diplomatic history in Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea during World War II (Stanford, 2009).

5 An appropriate elaboration of this idea would have to consider Zara Steiner's masterful The Triumph of the Dark: European International History 1933-1939 (Oxford, 2011). One of the productive features of Simons, Thomas W. Jr., textbook on east European history, Eastern Europe in the Postwar World (New York, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is that it begins with the diplomatic dilemmas of the interwar period.

6 The relationship between racism toward Africans and German wartime colonialism was one of the more pregnant themes of Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism. In the past fifteen years, the debate has been carried out on a more empirical basis in Germany. The main American contribution is Hull, Isabel V., Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, 2005)Google Scholar.

7 See, for example, Viola, Lynne, “Selbstkolonisierung der Sowjetunion und der Gulag der 1930er Jahre,” Transit, no. 38 (2009): 34–56 Google Scholar; and Martin, Terry, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Ithaca, 2001)Google Scholar. I incorporate some of the more recent evidence in “The Soviet Famines,” chap. 1 in Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010).

8 This period of state destruction is the backdrop for Carl Schmitt's most famous writings on international law: “The Groβraum Order of International Law with a Ban on Intervention for Spatially Foreign Powers: A Contribution to the Concept of Reich in International Law (19391941),” in Schmitt, Carl, Writings on War, ed. and trans. Nunan, Timothy (Cambridge, Eng., 2011), 75–124 Google Scholar. An interesting response by a Polish international lawyer is Klafkowski, Alfons, Okupacja niemiecka w Polsce w świetle prawa narodow (Poznań, 1946)Google Scholar.

9 See Berkhoff, Karel C., Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass., 2004)Google Scholar; and Pohl, Dieter, Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht: Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941-1944 (Munich, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A good deal of the relevant literature is cited in Snyder, “The Economics of Apocalypse,“ chap. 5 in Bloodlands.

10 The best-known argument of this form is Friedländer, Saul 's notion of redemptive antisemitism in his The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (New York, 2007)Google Scholar. I try to connect the ideology with the course of the actual campaign in the east and, in particular, to the new forms of politics it permitted, in “Double Occupation,“ chap. 5, and “The Greater Evil,” chap. 6 in Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (London, 2015). Foundational works for any such attempt include Longerich, Peter, Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich, 1998)Google Scholar; Gerlach, Christian, Kalkulierte Morde: Die deutsche Wirtschaftsund Vernichtungspolitik in Weiβruβland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburg, 1999)Google Scholar; and, above all, Dieckmann, Christoph, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen 1941-1944, 2 vols. (Göttingen, 2011)Google Scholar.

11 See Snyder, Bloodlands.

12 On double collaboration at the end of the war in Poland, see Skibińska, Alina, “Perpetrators’ Self-Portrait: The Accused Village Administrators, Commune Heads, Fire Chiefs, Forest Rangers, and Gamekeepers,” East European Politics and Societies 25, no. 3 (2011): 459 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grabowski, Jan, Judenjagd: Polowanie na Żydów 1942-1945. Studium dziejów pewnego powiatu (Warsaw, 2011), 109 Google Scholar; and Gross, Jan Tomasz, Sqsiedzi. Historia zaglady żydowskiego miasteczka (Sejny, 2000), 115 Google Scholar.

13 For critical reconceptualizations, see Yekelchyk, Serhy, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (Oxford, 2007)Google Scholar; Kappeler, Andreas, Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine (Munich, 1994)Google Scholar. I suggest some of these themes in The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (New York, 2008); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (New Haven, 2007); and The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (New Haven, 2003).

14 “Speech by the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, at the 50th Munich Security Conference, Munich, 1 February 2014,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, February 2,2014, at http://www.mid.ru/brp_4.nsf/0/90C4D89F4BF2B54344257C76002ACE67 (last accessed June 30,2015).

15 Sergey Glazyev, “Who Stands to Win? Political and Economic Factors in Regional Integration,” Global Affairs, December 27, 2013, at http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/Who-Stands-to-Win-16288 (last accessed June 30, 2015).

16 Oleg Riabov and Tatiana Riabova, “The Decline of Gayropa? How Russia Intends to Save the World,” Eurozine, February 5, 2014, at http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-02-05-riabova-en.html (last accessed June 30, 2015).

17 The prediction of a Russian invasion, which I believe I was alone in making, and which I wanted to make in sharper terms than the editors would allow, was in “Don't Let Putin Grab Ukraine,” New York Times, February 3,2014, at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/opinion/dont-let-putin-grab-ukraine.html?_r=0 (last accessed June 30, 2015). Generally, people who now claim that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was legitimate have passed through earlier phases of denying that it was possible and then denying that it was happening.

18 “Vladimir Putin Meets with Members of the Valdai Discussion Club: Transcript of the Final Plenary Session,” Valdai Club, October 25, 2014, at http://valdaiclub.com/valdai_club/73300.html (last accessed June 30,2015).

19 “An Interview with Sergey Glazyev,” National Interest, March 24,2014, at http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/interview-sergey-glazyev-10106 (last accessed June 30, 2015).

20 Alexander Dugin, “Letter to the American People about Ukraine,” Open Revolt!, March 8, 2014, at http://openrevolt.info/2014/03/08/alexander-dugin-letter-to-the-americanpeople-on-ukraine (last accessed June 30, 2015), which is of interest for other reasons as well; Alexander Dugin, “Towards Laocracy,” Open Revolt!, July 28, 2014, at http://openrevolt.info/2014/07/28/alexander-dugin-towards-laocracy/ (last accessed June 30,2015).

21 Tatiana Zhurzhenko and I translated first-person accounts of the Maidan protest in “DiAriès and Memoirs of the Maidan: Ukraine from November 2013 to February 2014,” Eurozine, June 27,2014, at http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-06-27-snyder-et-al-en.html (last accessed June 30, 2015). See also Pieniążek, Paweł, Pozdrowienia z Noworosji (Warsaw, 2015)Google Scholar; and Schuller, Konrad, Ukraine: Chronik einer Revolution (Berlin, 2014)Google Scholar.

22 A clear expression of this was Putin's address at Valdai on October 24,2014.

23 On a gathering of the Russian and European far right in Vienna to combat the supposed world gay conspiracy, see Gerhard Lechner, “Heilige Allianz gegen die 'Schwulenlobby,'” Wiener Zeitung, June 3, 2014, at http://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/europa/europaeische_union/635065_Heilige-AUianz-gegen-die-Schwulenlobby.html (last accessed June 30, 2015). On the Kremlin's relationships with the European far right, the best source is the stream of posts on Anton Shekhovstev's blog, at anton-shekhovtsov. blogspot.com (last accessed June 30,2015).

24 The Russian historian Andrei Zubov was quick to make the comparison with the Anschluss, in “Eto uzhe bylo,” Vedomosti, March 1, 2014, at http://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2014/03/01/andrej-zubov-eto-uzhe-bylo (last accessed June 30, 2015), and paid a price. Kremlin insider Andranik Migranian replied to Zubov by rehabilitating Hitler's foreign policy through 1939: “Nashi Peredonovy,” Izvestiia, April 3, 2014, at http://izvestia.ru/news/568603 (last accessed June 30,2015). From that point, it was not so difficult to predict that Putin would rehabilitate the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, especially given the Kremlin's support of the extreme right. I did so on May 16, 2014, in Kyiv. See Putin's remarks to history teachers, November 5, 2014, at http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/46951 (last accessed June 30, 2015); and my “Als Stalin Hitlers Verbundeter war,” Frankfurter Allgemeine, December 14, 2014, at http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/die-gegenwart/gastbeitragvon-timothy-snyder-hitler-stalin-pakt-13320814.html (last accessed June 30,2015).

25 Schmitt, “The Groβraum Order of International Law,” 124. China is the only winner of the war in Ukraine, at least thus far.