Volodymyr Yermolenko: The idea that history is unpredictable is important and revealing. But you often say that certain contemporary political trajectories can lead to fascism — and that sounds like a warning, as in your book On Tyranny. And if we are able to see these signs, doesn’t that mean that history is in some sense predictable? How can history be unpredictable and at the same time teach and warn us?

Timothy Snyder: The tension between predictability and unpredictability is more apparent than real. Unpredictability has two sides. Even when there are certain tendencies, small contingencies can change everything. For example, more careful baggage screening on September 10, 2001, could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and altered the course of history. Or take the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1939: it came down to minutes, and had it succeeded, European history — including the history of Ukraine — would have been completely different. These contingencies cannot be predicted.

Moreover, we ourselves can be unpredictable. Our ability to distinguish between what is possible and what is impossible allows us to influence events. If we believe that the past does not matter, then every new event shocks us and leaves us helpless. If we know history, even unexpected events can be recognized as part of a historical process. History makes the unfamiliar familiar and helps us become freer.

If we understand that history consists of many lines and possibilities, we can be prepared for different scenarios.

For example, if we know that a serious political incident will most likely be politically manipulated, we can talk about this in advance and reduce the chances of success for manipulators.

So if history were predictable, we would be predictable — and unfree. But its unpredictability means that those who know the past recognize patterns, causalities. In recognizing patterns, we gain the freedom to try to steer events. Therefore, it is legitimate and useful to see history not as a constraint but as a source of vision and models for action.

Volodymyr Yermolenko: One of the revolutions of the 19th century, the Romantic era, was the idea that people of the past are us. In German, French, and certainly Ukrainian Romanticism — in Shevchenko, Kulish, Kostomarov — emerges the notion: the Haidamaks are us, the same people with the same struggle. In this sense, the 19th century created the idea of history as something unified, continuous.

And the 20th century brought the opposite approach: history as “a foreign country.” Le Corbusier, for example, looked at the Middle Ages as if its people were extraterrestrials: you must begin from the idea of complete difference, and only then can you understand them.

I think both approaches are wrong. The problem with the Russian narrative — aside from the fact that it justifies violence and atrocities — is that it is simply incorrect: Rus’ is not Russia; these are different things.

But the opposite extreme is also wrong: to think that the people who lived here in the early modern period were wholly different, and that there is no connection between them and Ukrainian identity.

Timothy Snyder: Yes, this is a wonderful question. Let me expand the premise a bit before answering.

Among the Romantics, or more broadly in the 19th century, there truly was the idea that people of the past were similar to us but that modernization was corrupting or diluting us. Therefore, we had to resist modernization in order to return to some “true self.” This “true self,” in the Romantic imagination, was not historical at all — it was a pure, unchanging national or folkloric essence. Their vision of the past was a vision — but not a historical vision.

And I understand your point about alienation from people of the past. The past can be “another country,” but — I’m in a foreign country right now, and I can still talk to you. And this may sound simple, but when you try to understand people of the past, you understand yourself better — just as when you try to understand another country, you understand yourself better.

Of course, people of the past were different, but not so different as to be incomprehensible. A good historian, I think, will say: you must meet people of the past again and again — through every available source. And if we manage to understand them, it is because we somehow catch their rhythm, their pulse, their harmony.

History is possible — and here I am simply repeating Isaiah Berlin — not only because we have sources, but because we have this human capacity for empathy, the ability to reach out and find something that reaches back to us, something human and true.

So yes, people of the past were different. And that difference is one of the liberating elements of history. It is one of the elements of freedom: because when you recognize that people of the past were different, you recognize that there are other ways to organize human life.

And we moderns are extraordinarily arrogant about our current social and political arrangements. We think they are superior in every way, or we cannot even imagine radically different forms of organization. Fifty years from now, if some of us are still alive, we will think the same. And 50 years ago people believed the same.

But when you seriously engage with the past, you suddenly see: in some respects, they did things better. And this leads to an even more difficult thought — that people of the past might, in many respects, have been more capable and more intelligent than we are.

This turns the tables. Whether we’re Romantics or 20th-century historians, we think we have a “vantage point” from which we look back on people of the past — and from above.

And if they were studying us, they might understand us more quickly than we understand them. And if we were transported into their world, we might adapt more slowly than they would adapt to ours.

Thoughts like this are liberating. They shake you, give you a sense of intellectual vitality — as if something just happened.

So the difference of people in the past does not have to be a barrier. It can be a texture, a filter, a spectrum through which we do not see everything, but certain colors pass through — and through these colors we see ourselves.

Volodymyr Yermolenko: You do a lot not only to help the world understand Ukraine, but to help us understand ourselves better. Because in common perception, Ukrainian history is often said to begin in the Middle Ages, and Ukrainian literature in the 18th–19th centuries — which is wrong.

You propose a much deeper view: Greek connections, the Scythians, the Trypillians — ancient layers that have long existed in the Ukrainian intellectual tradition. Hrushevsky begins history very deep; there are authors for whom the most interesting part of Ukrainian history lies literally underground, in archaeology.

My question is: working with this deep, pre-literate era, what can we learn? What do you want to understand by diving into early Ukrainian history?

Timothy Snyder: This is a truly excellent question, and I want to begin by expanding your premise — because it is extremely important.

Hrushevsky, the founder of Ukrainian historiography and one of the early social historians — he was wrong about some things but absolutely right about others. For example, he engaged in the debates on the origins of the Indo-European languages — a debate that had already gone on for some time and continues today, although, as I’ll say in a moment, I think it is close to being resolved.

What concerns me is a kind of tacit alliance between ethnic nationalism and constructivism. What they share is an inclination to make the past very recent, narrow, short.

If you are a constructivist, you may conclude that the nation is something very recent, a conscious invention, and that the deep past “doesn’t matter.” But ethnic nationalists do something surprisingly similar. They say: “Of course we are an ethnos, a people, we have always been here.” But their notion of “always” reaches only a few decades back. Their pantheon of heroes usually reaches no earlier than the mid-20th century — perhaps the late 19th.

The main mistake is drawing the border of history at modernity. But modernity could only arise because of what happened before modernity.

We tend to think that what happens today depends on yesterday, and tomorrow depends on today. We react to news, live in a very narrow present. But in truth, your experience of tomorrow depends far more on the first five years of your life than on the present. You do not remember those first five years — but they were decisive.

So yes, the history of the nation matters for Ukrainians. You don’t need to know every detail of the past because “the nation was invented by some intellectuals.” On the contrary: the deep past matters enormously, and today we have the methods to study it.

These methods are technologies.

Paradoxically, there is one area where high technology makes us much smarter. It is not the future. And not even the present.

The area where technology truly makes us smarter is the past — especially the deep past. I am a modernist; I work mostly with written sources. But I deeply appreciate how certain technologies have “brought to life” the past and made visible what was once invisible. And these insights are directly relevant to the history of Ukraine.

Let me give one “fun” example and then two very serious ones.

The fun example is the Amazons. For most of the 20th century, the dominant Freudian interpretation claimed that Amazons were a projection of Greek anxiety about women: because Greek women were restricted to domestic roles, the Greeks imagined warrior women on horseback. It sounded plausible — but it was wrong.

How do we know? Because Ukrainian archaeologists excavated dozens of burial sites containing many biologically female remains buried with weapons and armor. About one out of five armed burials from the Scythian era is a woman.

How do we know they are women? Because for much of the 20th century people looked at these remains and said: “These are small men with unusual pelvic structures.” One could debate this forever — until real technology arrived. When you can scrape a bone, get DNA, then you know.

We cannot say with certainty how these people understood themselves — that is difficult. But we can say with certainty that they were biologically women. And this changes everything. Greek art must be interpreted differently. The entire tradition in which Heracles, Theseus, Perseus, Achilles encounter Amazons looks different. The fact that Amazons are among the most common motifs in Greek pottery takes on new meaning once you know that Greeks regularly interacted with real women warriors who could kill them.

That’s one example of how technology can end a debate.

Now to the deep prehistory of Ukraine — the Trypillians.

Trypillians, around Uman about 6,000 years ago, built settlements — Nebelivka, Talianky, Maidanetske — which at that time were the largest urban agglomerations in the world. They were built according to a model entirely different from Mesopotamian cities.

There were two models of ancient cities. The European (Ukrainian) one — and it truly is Ukrainian, because nowhere else in Europe do we see cities even close to these in scale. And the Mesopotamian one — built in stone, with walls and visible centers of power.

The Trypillian model consisted of semicircles of houses, several larger structures (today called “mega-structures”), and a vast open plaza in the center. Whatever the interpretation, Trypillian urban topography is radically different from Mesopotamian. No visible centers of authority. We cannot say exactly how it worked, but we can say: differently. And that sparks the imagination.

Returning to your earlier point: this reminds us that history has many lines. There are many ways of organizing human communities.

How do we know all this? Because today these sites are just plowed fields. You cannot see them visually. They were first noticed by a pilot from above; then LiDAR revealed them; and updated radiocarbon analysis dated the organic materials — because these cities were not made of stone.

Thanks to technology, we can understand how they looked and functioned and begin to imagine how these societies worked.

Or take a related question: when did Indo-European languages emerge? And the question of the Indo-European homeland — the place where the languages you speak originated: Slavic, Germanic, Romance, Indian, Iranian — languages spoken by nearly half of humanity. There is persuasive archaeological evidence pointing to Ukraine. Persuasive linguistic evidence also pointing to Ukraine. But this was long a matter of debate.

Until ancient DNA appeared. Once ancient DNA data arrive, you can trace movements of peoples, their origins, their migrations.

I should add that the debate continues. But technology strongly pushes us in a particular direction regarding fundamental questions — and these questions often concern Ukraine.

Volodymyr Yermolenko: My final question is about how the world perceives history. I have the impression that in 20th- and early 21st-century intellectual culture the dominant idea is that history has already happened, and we live in a kind of “post-history.” I don’t mean Fukuyama specifically, but rather the European myth: war is something of the past, history is a chain of tragedies and conflicts that supposedly no longer repeat.

Tony Judt described Europe’s history as “post-war,” and this is still a defining metaphor: everything good in Europe is “after the war,” as if war and history were left behind.

Do you see another type of person — authors, historians, philosophers, writers — who have a deep sense of history not as something past but as something happening now, passing through our bodies? In the Ukrainian context, I think of Lesia Ukrainka; in the European — Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, and others. Are there such people today?

Timothy Snyder: When people think about the past, they don’t need a fully formed worldview. What sometimes helps is clarity and truth about something specific. I have visited soldiers many times. The word I often hear is “culture.” By “culture” they do not mean that Ukrainian soldiers should have a comprehensive narrative of Ukrainian history. They want a piece of something beautiful and true. Not the whole, but a fragment. They want to know more about songs, traditional clothing, classic works.

So the one thing we should try to do is ensure that people have access to fragments of something true, even if it’s impossible to give them the whole. This brings us back to your question about recognizing patterns. Recognizing patterns is seeing a fragment of history in a way that is true and instructive. It’s a moment of insight, when you know enough to feel the rhythm of a thing — and then you realize: “Aha, this rhythm has something to do with what’s happening now.” But it does not mean that the war repeats past wars. It has similarities with the First and Second World Wars, but it is not a repetition.

People do not need to have a complete concept of the past. Lesia Ukrainka didn’t have one. They often need something small — a bit of clarity and truth about a specific thing. I’ve spoken to soldiers many times, and the word I often hear is “culture.” They don’t mean a full history. They want to know more about a song, a piece of clothing, a melody, a classic text — something beautiful and true. A fragment. Not the whole, but a part that matters.

Even if you are a professional historian, your “fragments” are simply larger — a book, a monograph — but they are still just fragments you try to make beautiful and true. We must ensure that people have access to fragments, even if we cannot give them everything.

And this brings us back to patterns. To see a pattern is to see a fragment of history in a way that is true and instructive. It’s the moment of insight when you suddenly catch the rhythm of something and realize: “Aha, this relates to the present.”

Let me end with one vivid example. Federica Amadino’s essay Nothing Bad Has Ever Happened Here. At a certain moment she saw her landscape differently than ever before. She recognized her city — a city that seemed familiar. She had been reading Lem and suddenly realized: so many horrible things happened here. And suddenly all of it became visible. The city became unfamiliar — and therefore more real. Because if I see this, I am in some way responsible.

One reason I am glad to be here, among Ukrainian friends, is that I feel many people here do not think that the past simply repeats itself. Because if it does — no one is responsible. But if the past helps us see how something works, then we cannot avoid thinking: “I am inside this.” And the fact that I see it means that I bear a certain responsibility.