“Without a history built and defended upon an entirely different foundation, we will find that Hitler and Stalin continue to define their own works for us. What might that basis be?[…] Its form arises not from the political geography of empires but from the human geography of victims. The bloodlands were no political territory, real or imagined: they are simply where Europe’s most murderous regimes did their most murderous work.”

Timothy Snyder, 2010, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.