On Freedom

Snyder opens the introduction with a childhood memory of the American bicentennial in 1976. He observes that the bicentennial myth treats freedom as something completed in 1776 by removing British rule, while the Liberty Bell’s later symbolism—its famous crack suggesting something incomplete—points to people who have not yet received freedom. This contrast leads him to question conceptions of liberty that define it only as an absence of restraint.

Snyder then sketches his family background in southwest Ohio and the local culture of innovation related to flight—Dayton industry, the Wright Brothers, and the space program—framing his early sense of American mobility and possibility. He recounts time spent on both sets of grandparents’ farms, his interest in reading and history, and formative Cold War impressions: nuclear fear as an everyday backdrop and a grandmother’s insistence that he remember the Holocaust when thinking about World War II. He suggests that during the Cold War, anxiety over nuclear holocaust often overshadowed reflection on recent democratic failures and the risks of fascism closer to home.

As a college student in the late 1980s, Snyder becomes interested in Soviet dissidents in Eastern Europe and the politics of dignity beyond fear. The revolutions of 1989 redirect his plans from nuclear arms negotiations toward history and economics. He travels to Moscow in 1990, where he reflects on the Soviet economy’s concentration, the challenges of transition, and the likelihood that privatization without structural reform could lead to oligarchy. He notes that Western assumptions after 1991 often treated markets and private property as automatic guarantees of freedom and democracy, replacing one determinism with another and diminishing attention to history and institutions.

Snyder reviews American “exceptionalism” after the Cold War: the domestic and foreign effects of policies designed to combat communism; the scientific and cultural investments spurred by the US’s rivalry with the USSR; and, after 1991, a shift toward neoliberal confidence that deregulation and privatization would yield endless prosperity. He links this reliance on “negative freedom” to advice given to Eastern Europe and to domestic policies in the 1990s and 2000s, including mass incarceration and the post-9/11 trade-off between liberty and security. He recounts misreadings of Russia in the 1990s and 2000s: the consolidation of capitalist monopoly, Vladimir Putin’s centralization of power, and the use of propaganda that targets emotions and corrodes factual consensus. He describes how American politics becomes vulnerable to disinformation as wealth concentration grows and social media amplifies division.

The narrative returns to Ukraine to illustrate how assumptions about automatic outcomes fail. As Russian dictator Vladimir Putin prepares to invade Ukraine in February 2022, many observers predict that Ukraine will fall quickly and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will flee. Snyder recalls forecasting the opposite. When Russia invades, Zelensky remains in Kyiv and publicly affirms his presence. Snyder presents this as a consequential political moment connected to speech, commitment, and setting a public example of courage amid danger. He recounts early Ukrainian successes around Kyiv and Kharkiv and the de-occupation of previously occupied towns and cities.

Snyder closes the introduction by linking biography and history: Character is the product of decisions over time, and moments arise when people act according to what they have become. The book’s aim is to define freedom in a way that accounts for structures, purposes, and shared life, setting up the chapters that follow to develop five “forms of freedom” and to connect philosophical reflection to institutional and political design.