On Freedom

Timothy Snyder is best known as a historian of Eastern and Central Europe, with landmark works such as Bloodlands (2010), which examined mass killings under Hitler and Stalin, and On Tyranny (2017), which distilled lessons from history into 20 principles for resisting authoritarianism. A professor at Yale University, Snyder has also published widely in outlets such as The New York Review of Books and Foreign Affairs. His work often reaches beyond academia, shaping debates on democracy, memory, and authoritarianism.

On Freedom marks a shift from narrative history into political philosophy, though Snyder’s historical concerns remain central. Instead of chronicling atrocities, he seeks to articulate the conditions that make freedom possible, framing liberty through five “forms”: sovereignty, unpredictability, mobility, factuality, and solidarity. His training as a historian grounds these abstractions in lived realities, as he discusses the work of Eastern European dissidents, US civil rights activists, and Ukrainians fighting to preserve their independence against Russian imperialism. His teaching in both elite universities and prisons also inflects his approach, showing freedom as a practice available to all.