professor timothy snyder in vienna, welcome to hardtalk. glad to be with you.re a world—renowned historian, but increasingly you seem to be engaged with the politics of the present and i'm wondering why that is. is it for the simple reason that you do not believe the lessons of history are being learned? i think a lot of it has to do with demand. has to do with the fact that, whether you're in the us, or in the uk or in europe, or other places, there have been a lot of surprising events and historians are specialists in surprise. and most of the things that happen that we're supposed to rememberfrom history, the first world war, the second world war and so on, were not expected or predicted at the time. so historians are there to say, "look, nothing's predictable. don't be surprised, but, hey, there are some patterns." and if we learn more about those patterns, we might be better able to come to grips with the problems that we're facing now. interesting that you talk about patterns. are you suggesting that, if you understand the patterns, and read them well eno