LAWRENCE — An author and Yale historian will talk tonight at Kansas University about what he calls “the Bloodlands” – that part of Eastern Europe that served as an unwilling and doomed chessboard for Hitler and Stalin. Timothy Snyder will speak tonight at 7 in the Malott Room of the Kansas Union in the first Backus Lecture of the year at KU. Snyder’s book, “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,” chronicles the enormous human death toll in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and the eastern Baltic republics between 1933 and 1944. At least 14 million people starved to death, were shot or bombed or gassed, he said in his book. During his speech at Ottawa University earlier this week, former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko discussed the millions of Ukrainians who starved to death during the 1930s because of Stalin’s policies of stripping Ukraine of crops and food for Russians, or who were killed by the Nazis during World War II. Snyder’s lecture is free and open to the public.
Thursday, Sept. 22, 6:30 a.m.
