New York Review of Books

“A better future for Ukraine and Europe is possible,” writes the historian Timothy Garton Ash in the magazine’s February 23 issue. “It’s worth emphasizing the scale of this historic opportunity. Anchoring Ukraine…firmly in the geopolitical West would mean the effective end of the Russian empire. As a result, for the first time in European history, we would have a fully postimperial Europe.”

Born in London, Garton Ash studied in both West and East Berlin in the 1970s, and he was ultimately banned from East Germany after writing a critical account of the Communist regime. Since 1984 he has contributed nearly a hundred essays to The New York Review, tracing a history of modern Europe from the enduring repercussions of the Holocaust to the fate of Germany to the democratic movements in Eastern and Central Europe.

Below, we have collected a selection of Garton Ash’s work from our archives.

Timothy Garton Ash
Ukraine in Our Future

Ukraine faces extraordinary challenges, but it also presents a challenge for Europe—and a great opportunity.

Which Way Will Germany Go?

“No one is more suspicious of the Germans than the Germans themselves.”

The Life of Death

“Lanzmann’s unique artistic achievement is to have re-created the life of the death camps. The life of death.”

Is Europe Disintegrating?

“Had I been cryogenically frozen in January 2005, I would have gone to my provisional rest as a happy European…. Cryogenically reanimated in January 2017, I would immediately have died again from shock.”

From World War to Cold War

“The question ‘What should “the West” have done differently?’ underlies virtually all discussions of cold war origins.”

Timothy Garton Ash and Timothy Snyder
The Orange Revolution

“What changed everything, however, was the response of ordinary people. At first thousands of Kyiv’s citizens demonstrated, then hundreds of thousands; soon after, people from the rest of the country answered the call to come to Kyiv.”

The Imperfect Spy

“‘Germany in the early 1950s was a huge web of declared and undeclared connections, secret shame, and covert loyalties on both the Right and the Left. Nothing was certain, no one could be trusted completely, appearances deceived.’”