Timothy Snyder on why history matters — and how we get it wrong

In September 2025, in Kyiv, a prominent American historian Timothy Snyder received the Vasyl Stus Prize — a Ukrainian award honoring the name of Vasyl Stus, one of Ukraine’s greatest poets and dissidents of the 20th century, killed by the Soviet regime in 1985. Founded in 1989 by Yevhen Sverstiuk, another prominent Ukrainian dissident, the prize is now awarded by PEN Ukraine, the publishing house Dukh i Litera, and the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School.

Before the award ceremony, we held a public conversation with Snyder on the good and bad ways of thinking about history. Since interpretations of history often lie at the heart of both the good and the evil that people do, this question remains vitally important.

• Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, and president of PEN Ukraine. Thinking in Dark Times seeks to find the light through — and despite — today’s darkness.

UkraineWorld is an English-language media about Ukraine run by Internews Ukraine Listen to our podcasts:

Explaining Ukraine: https://li.sten.to/explaining-ukraine

Thinking in Dark Times: https://li.sten.to/thinkinggg

Special thanks to the Ukrainian History Global Initiative, PEN Ukraine, and the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School for helping organize this event.

This episode was made possible with the support of Politeia, a Ukrainian NGO dedicated to preparing a new generation of change-makers in Ukraine.

You can also listen to several other conversations with Timothy Snyder from previous years:

• On freedom: Timothy Snyder in Kyiv https://ukraineworld.org/en/podcasts/ep-344
• Timothy Snyder in Kharkiv: A conversation about freedom https://ukraineworld.org/en/podcasts/ep-340
• Freedom as a value and a task https://ukraineworld.org/en/podcasts/ep-258
• Ukraine, the war, and the plurality of values https://ukraineworld.org/en/podcasts/ep-144

You can support UkraineWorld on https://www.patreon.com/ukraineworld. We rely on crowdfunding to continue our work.

You can also support our regular trips to the frontlines, where we provide support to both soldiers (cars) and civilians (books): PayPal, ukraine.resisting@gmail.com