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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2914 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: April 23rd: What are you reading this week?

he goes as far as blaming the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for antisemitic violence in the Soviet Union while dismissing the steady and unopposed pogroms that drove many jews out of tsarist Russia. That's one of the things I really liked about Judt - when presented with the breakup of Yugoslavia, he didn't wave his hands and say "no one could have predicted" and "both sides were at fault." He lays out chapter and verse how the Serbians had a blood feud against the Bosnians and have done since the Hapsburgs but violence was held in check by larger political powers.

What was the Woodrow Wilson quote? "You can have peace or justice, but not both?" It seems like "peace" requires blame to be assigned to victims even when they're blameless. Snyder's book stinks of that.