Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

by Anne Applebaum

The momentous new book from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag and Iron Curtain.

In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the twentieth century. With unprecedented authority and detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible, and what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events.

The book draws on a mass of archival material and first-hand testimony only available since the end of the Soviet Union, as well as the work of Ukrainian scholars all over the world. It includes accounts of the famine by those who survived it, describing what human beings can do when driven mad by hunger. It shows how the Soviet state ruthlessly used propaganda to turn neighbours against each other in order to expunge supposedly 'anti-revolutionary' elements. It also records the actions of extraordinary individuals who did all they could to relieve the suffering.

The famine was rapidly followed by an attack on Ukraine's cultural and political leadership - and then by a denial that it had ever happened at all. Census reports were falsified and memory suppressed. Some western journalists shamelessly swallowed the Soviet line; others bravely rejected it, and were undermined and harassed. The Soviet authorities were determined not only that Ukraine should abandon its national aspirations, but that the country's true history should be buried along with its millions of victims. Red Famine, a triumph of scholarship and human sympathy, is a milestone in the recovery of those memories and that history. At a moment of crisis between Russia and Ukraine, it also shows how far the present is shaped by the past.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Russia, Ukraine, Politics, Audiobook, Russian History

496 pages, Hardcover

First published September 7, 2017

About the author

Anne Elizabeth Applebaum is a Polish-American journalist and writer. She has written extensively about Marxism–Leninism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. She has worked at The Economist and The Spectator, and was a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post.

Reviews

[Debbie W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2008, Canada (and several other countries) established the Ukrainian Famine and Genocide ("Holodomor") Memorial Day Act, and that the 4th Saturday in November shall be known as "Ukrainian Famine and Genocide ("Holodomor") Memorial Day.

Holod = hunger
Mor = extermination

Being of Ukrainian descent, I thought it only fitting that I read this book at this time, with the hope of gaining more knowledge about this historical atrocity. Author Anne Applebaum didn't let me down! Her extensive research detailed the following directives imposed by Stalin that created the famine of 1931-1934 when approximately 5 million people starved to death:

1. collectivization (the replacement of private farms with state-run farms) made entrepreneurial farmers into so-called "paid" laborers. This led to the loss of the incentive for growing more grain as well as respect for property, dignity, and human life;
2. grain requisitions - Stalin's unrealistic demands were specifically aimed at Ukraine's peasants who couldn't meet grain export requirements (for various reasons.) The goal was to sacrifice the peasant in order to industrialize the USSR; therefore, all grain was confiscated, even that saved for bread and for seed;
3. blacklisted farms and whole villages- extremely harsh punishments (including death!) were meted out when grain quotas weren't met, including the ban of trade, confiscations and various sanctions;
4. strict border controls - meant to keep starving peasants from leaving their homes in search of food;
5. extraordinary searches - it was most disturbing to read how the starving peasants would eat anything, even resorting to cannibalism, in order to survive! Also disturbing was how brigades were on constant lookout and would take away anything of value that could be exchanged for food, implements that could be used to prepare food, and, of course, "food" itself. Many people were executed for such "infractions";
6. a call for the end of Ukrainization - this included language, schools, history, culture and overall identity (aka genocide!); and,
7. blockade of information - Stalin refused to admit he was wrong and went to great lengths to cover up this famine from faking census registries to misleading foreign celebrities and press corps.
Interesting note: Canadian journalist, Rhea Clyman (she is mentioned in Genevieve Graham's book Letters Across the Sea) was forcibly deported when she was caught travelling across the USSR in 1932 and reporting on the Holodomor.

Applebaum reports how the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster forced Mikael Gorbachev to initiate his glasnost policy which eventually allowed this famine to be brought to light and confirmed. This also spawned discussion as to whether or not it should be classified as a genocide.

My overall thoughts:
1. Although Applebaum's detailed research made for some heavy academic reading at times, I didn't want to give up on this book since I felt personally invested;
2. I finally learned why some of my Ukrainian ancestors weren't directly affected by this famine; and,
3. I also appreciated the inclusion of 24 pages of black and white photos as well as four maps depicting various points in history relevant to this book.

A MUST READ for anyone interested in European history!

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

#unitedwithUkraine #supportUkraine #standupforukraine #slavaukraini #gloryukraine

As we know, in any case, in order to understand an issue, we need to understand the background. In this case, in order to understand the famine, we need to understand the history of Ukrainian fight for independence.

It’s not until the late 20th century that Ukraine establishes a sovereign state, after centuries of paving their way to it. (Between 16-17th centuries – the lands were part of Poland under the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, and between 18-20th centuries – part of the Russian empire). As explained, that is due to the geography. The Carpathian Mountains marked the border in the southwest, but the gentle forests and open fields or the open steppe in the east could not stop invading armies.

What makes the lands of Ukraine so special? Fertile lands. The rich soil that is especially fertile in the lower part of the Dnieper River basin brings good crops that can be grown twice a year. Donbas on the eastern edge of Ukraine is known for the mining and manufacturing.

The Ukrainian Revolution of 1917 (beginning of the Ukrainian War of Independence 1917-1921) was sparked by the shortages of food. The Russian empire had struggled with food supplies since WWI as they strived to eliminate middlemen, creating non-capitalist form of grain distribution and collective farming.

The drought in the summer of 1921 combined with confiscatory food collection policies, lack of sufficient men to work in the fields, and the acres of unsown land proved catastrophic. You survive bad weather through the preservation and storage of surplus grain. But the surplus was all confiscated, resulting in famine. Despite all that, Lenin’s tactics sharpened. More pressure was put on peasants in better-off provinces, Ukraine was deemed to be one.

Some scholars argue that the famine was used instrumentally to put an end to the Ukrainian peasant rebellions.

The strength of the wealthy farmers was unacceptable to Stalin. Thus, he reinforced collective farming (which was tried on a small scale and mostly abandoned in 1918-1919). Impossible grain quota led to starvation. Due to the export policy, the Ukrainians watched food leaving their hungry republic. In 1932, the requisitions extended to the livestock, vegetables and dairy products.

In January 1933, the borders of Ukraine were closed to put an end to people leaving the villages to save themselves from starvation.

In springtime, the famine in 1933 reached its peak.

The post-famine crisis suddenly faced a drastic shortage of labor in the Ukrainian countryside. That further led to resettling people from Russia.

The above information is a rough outline for what the book explores in great detail. There is a great effort to present the information in many points, which at times, sounds repetitive and tedious.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this book is about the ‘Holodomor’ (the word is derived from the Ukrainian words, ‘holod’ or ‘hunger’ and ‘mor’ or extermination) or famine of 1932-33, it is actually about much more than that. It is about the repression of the Ukrainian intellectual and political class, of the Sovietisation of Ukraine, the collectivisation of agriculture and the attempts to wipe out Ukrainian culture and language.

Ironically, it was the fertile soil and relatively mild climate of Ukraine, which led to them becoming so valuable to the Soviet Union. The country had two harvests a year and was responsible for feeding far more than their own region. The author takes us back to the revolution of 1917 and traces how the period of upheaval saw optimism for Ukraine, but, by 1918, Lenin was making plans to occupy the area. In fact, the first half of this history looks at the various uprisings, uneasy periods of peace, discontent, crisis and rationing, which led up to the events of 1932/33.

By 1930, collectivisation of farming led from what had been a loose organisation of farming, by the Soviet Union, to tight control and grain requisitioning demands which were impossible to fulfil. There was pressure on the agricultural peasants to send more and more grain outside Ukraine, but the farmers themselves lost control of their lives – and lost enthusiasm for working the land. However, Stalin’s policies led to famine across the grain-growing regions of the USSR and nowhere more than Ukraine. Not only was the country under pressure to keep producing – and yet not keeping - enough crops to keep them alive, but anyone caught stealing food faced many years in a labour camp, or death. By the end of 1932, over 100,000 people had been sent to camps and 4,500 were executed.

The author then goes on to the actual famine period which is terrible to read about. All grain now was t be collected to fulfil Russian demands and no excuses were accepted. However, although activists swept through villages; taking not only grain, but fruit, seeds, vegetables, flour – indeed everything from crusts on the table to the family cow – there was no sympathy for the Ukrainian people. It is clear that Soviet newspapers presented the starving population as unpatriotic; arguing they did not care about the workers or the 5 year plan.

Although this is a serious historical work, it is not dry or dull in any way. There can be nothing about this book which fails to move you – reading of children who die during lessons at school, of the distrust, suspicion and lack of empathy as witnesses became indifferent to the suffering around them, is both tragic and horribly real. Yet, this is as much about the attempts by the Ukrainian people to retain their culture and language, as it was to resist the government’s attempts to starve their nation. I must admit I knew little about Ukrainian history, but this was an eye opening read about a terrible period of history and of a people who survived against the odds.

[Maziyar Yf · Rating 4 out of 5]

خانم اپلبام نویسنده و روزنامه نگار آمریکایی در کتاب خود قحطی سرخ به یکی از فجایع کمتر شناخته شده پرداخته . فاجعه ای که در سایه حوادث تلخ پس از خود مانند هولوکاست یا بمباران اتمی هیروشیما و ناکازاکی فراموش شده به نظر می رسد . موضوع اصلی کتاب او قحطی مصنوعی یا همان هولودومور یا قحطی بزرگ اوکراین بوده که میلونها کشته به جا گذاشت .
کتاب او به طور کلی دو موضوع اصلی را دنبال کرده : اول بین سالهای 1917-1934 بر اوکراین چه گذشته و به ویژه چه اتفاقی در سالهای 1932 و 1933 افتاده ؟ برای پاسخ به پرسش های فوق نویسنده گریزی کوتاه به تقسیم شدن متعدد اوکراین میان لهستان ، روسیه ، امپراتوری عثمانی و اتریش مجارستان زده و ریشه تمایلات استقلال طلبانه اوکراین را پس از انقلاب روسیه بررسی کرده . مبارزات استقلال خواهانه اوکراینی ها به رهبری سیمون پتلیورا در سال 1917 منجر به تشکیل کشور اوکراین شد ، استقلالی که شوربختانه عمر چندانی نداشت و چند سال بعد اوکراین توسط شوروی بلعیده شد و استقلال آن برای دهه ها به عقب افتاد .
تلاش نویسنده برای شرح آنچه بر اوکراین میان سالهای 1917-1934 گذشته سخت ستودنی بوده . زبان اوکراینی به عنوان عامل تقویت کننده و هویت بخش اوکراینی ها یکی از مهمترین فاکتورها بوده .در حالی که در شهرها زبان روسی ، لهستانی یا ییدیش صحبت می شده در روستاها روستانشینان به زبان اوکراینی صحبت می کردند. تضعیف زبان اوکراینی و تحمیل زبان روسی آن گونه که نویسنده نوشته حتی در دوران روسیه تزاری هم یک سیاست عمده بوده و مسکو نشینان اصولا زبان اوکراینی را یک زبان نمی دانستند بلکه صرفا آنرا لهجه ای گرفته شده از زبان روسی می دانستند . مسکو با تضعیف زبان اوکراینی سیاست نابودی ملی گرایی در اوکراین و هدف مهمتر نابودی فرهنگ و ملت اوکراین و ذوب شدن آن در دل روسیه و سپس شوروی را دنبال می کرد . نتیجه ای که نویسنده از سیاست هولودومور و تضعیف و نابودی فرهنگ اوکراینی گرفته جهت سیاست کلی روسیه و یا شوروی را در برابر اوکراین تا سالهای مشخص کرده : سرکوب ایده ملی گرایی اوکراین و نابود شدن هرگونه چالش میان اوکراین و شوروی و شناخته شدن اوکراین به عنوان به عنوان یکی از جمهوری های شوروی . ایده ای که دست کم 80 سال عمر کرد .

روسیه ، اوکراین گرسنگی و قحطی

روسیه و اوکراین از سال 1921 دچار قحطی شدند که جان 5 میلیون نفر را گرفت . این قحطی به سبب خشکسالی غیر عادی تشدید هم شد و عواملی مانند جنگ جهانی اول و جنگ داخلی را می توان زمینه ساز آن دانست . لنین این قحطی را به رسمیت شناخت و تلاش هایی هم در جهت مهار آن انجام داد . آن گونه که در کتاب تراژدی مردم آمده تلاشهای بی وقفه ماکسیم گورگی و سخاوت آمریکایی ها سبب نجات جان میلونها نفر از قحطی شد . اپلبام پس از شرح این قحطی به موضوا اصلی کتاب یا همان هولودومور یا قحطی بزرگ پرداخته . قحطی که عامل آن خشکسالی و یا طبیعت نبود . این قحطی برنامه و ایده استالین بود وهمان گونه از ذات شیطانی ونبوغ دیوانه وارش انتظار می رفت این برنامه مخوف را با موفقیت اجرا کرد .

زمانی که غذا خوردن جرم می شود

در سال 1932 حزب کمونیست مجموعه ای از تصمیمات را تصویب ک��د که به قحطی در اوکراین شدت بخشید و آنرا گسترش داد . حزب سیاست اشتراکی سازی مزارع را به شدت گسترش داد . دهقانان که استالین آنان را دشمن شماره یک خود می دانست موظف به تحویل دام هایشان به کلخوزها شدند . در همین حال پلیس و نیروهای حزب با انگیزه ایجاد گرسنگی و ترس وارد خانه دهقانان شدند و همه خوراکی های آنان شامل سیب زمینی ، چغندر ، نخود و لوبیا و آنچه از دام ها و حیوانات خانگی آنان مانده بود و حتی غذاهایی را که روی اجاق و یا برسر سفره دهقانان نگون بخت بود با خود بردند .استالین برای کامل کردن نقشه شیطانی خود دستور مصادره بذر دهقانان را صادر و به این ترتیب آنان را از محصول سال بعد هم محروم کرد . اما او به دهقانان اوکراینی فرصت انتخاب داد . آن ها می توانستند از گندم و غلات خود صرف نظر کرده و از گرسنگی بمیرند یا می توانستند با پنهان کردن غلات خود خطر دستگیری و اعدام را به جان بخرند . نویسنده توضیح داده که چگونه پلیس با ابزارهای مخصوصی مانند میله و یا نیزه ، زمین ، تخت ها و گهواره ها ، دیوارها ، دودکش ها ، تنه درختان ، لانه سگ ها ، کف چاه ها و رودخانه ها را سوراخ می کردند تا غله و بذر و یا ذخیره دهقانان اوکراینی را کشف و ضبط کنند . هیولا سپس دستور داد مرزهای اوکراین بسته شود و دهقانان حق سوار شدن به قطار را هم نداشته باشند . بدین گونه تقریبا تمام مواد غذایی از دست میلیون ها اوکراینی خارج شد و بخش بسیار مهمی از پروژه اوکراین زدایی انجام شد . او پیشتر و یا همزمان با ممنوعیت استفاده از زبان اوکراینی تقریبا در همه جا و دستگیری های بسیار گسترده قشر فرهنگی ، معلمان ، اساتید دانشگاه ، نویسنده ها و شاعرها نابودی فرهنگ اوکراین را شروع کرده بود .
شاید جالب ترین بخش کتاب خاطرات افرادی بودند که در این قحطی وحشتناک زنده ماندند . داستان های این افراد بسیار باور نکردنی و چگونگی نجات یافتن آنها شبیه به معجزه بوده . بیشتر باقی مانده ها از نقش بسیار حیاتی گاو و شیر آن در زنده ماندن و جان به در بردن سخن گفته اند . نگه داری گاو در زمانی که پلیس با پشتکاری باور نکردنی مرغ و خروس دهقانان شوربخت را می گرفته کم از معجزه نداشته . برخی از خانواده ها همانند سوفی در انتخاب سوفی مجبور به انتخابی سخت شده و از بین فرزندان خود یکی را سیر کنند . پدیده وحشتناک دیگری که رخ داده مرده خواری و آدم خواری بوده . یکی از وحشتناک ترین خاطره ها مربوط به مردی ایست که از همسایه اش می پرسد فرزندانش کجاست و او پاسخ می دهد فرزندانم را خوردم . اگر زیاد صحبت کنی ترا هم می خورم .

شوروی ، روسیه و انکار هولودومور

آشکار است که استالین و مقامات کرملین هیچ گاه نپذیرفتند که قحطی وجود داشته . بایگانی های محلی ، سوابق مرگ و میر نابود شد و استالین حتی داده های مربوط به سرشماری را هم تغییر داد و جمعیت را بیشتر کرد . تا زمان حیات شوروی قحطی انکار می شد و با روی کار آمدن رژیم خشن پوتین سیاست های مسکو دوباره به شدت ضد اوکراین شد . قحطی اوکراین در سطح جهانی به بحث های نازلی مانند نسل کشی ، جنایت علیه بشریت تا تنها یک عمل ترور آمیز جمعی سقوط کرد اما در هر صورت نمی توان کتمان کرد که قحطی اتفاق افتاد و عمدی هم بود و بخشی از یک برنامه برای تضعیف هویت اوکراینی محسوب می شد .

اوکراین مسیر سخت گذشته و آینده تاریک پیش رو

مسیری که اوکراین در قرن بیستم گذارنده سخت وحشتناک و خونین بوده . گرچه اوکراینی ها در بخشی از این راه پر درد و رنج با روسها شریک و هم درد بوده اند . فجایعی مانند جنگ جهانی اول ، جنگ خونین داخلی ، قحطی 1921 ، هولودومور و سپس جنگ جهانی دوم ، کشتار یهودیان در دره بابی یار ، هولو کاست وحشتناک در اوکراین و البته خطر قحطی مصنوعی دیگر به دست نازی ها که شکست برنامه آنان را ناتمام گذاشت تنها بخشی ازداستان پر رنج اوکراین بوده و هستند . شوربختانه سختی و مصیبت اوکراین در این قرن هم ادامه یافته و خرس روسیه بار دگر به تاریخ ، هویت و فرهنگ اوکراین دست درازی کرده است .
در پایان باید گفت که کتاب قحطی سرخ را تنها می توان مانند مقدمه ای کوتاه بر رابطه دو کشور با یکدیگر و تجربه مشترک و البته متفاوتشان از نظام سوسیالیستی دانست . به همین ترتیب خانم اپلبام توانسته میان آنچه امروز بین روسیه و اوکراین و آنچه در گذشته میان آنان گذشته رابطه برقرار کند . از نگاه او هولودومور، شوروی سازی اوکراین و سرکوب گسترده نخبگان اوکراینی را باید پس زمینه اساسی و کلیدی اتفاقات امروز دانست .

[Beata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ann Applebaum does not disappoint. A thorough account of the most terrifying times in the history of Ukraine. Superb panorama and the background. Ms Applebaum presents us with not just the several years of the famine itself but also explains in detail the reasons behind the tragedy of millions of innocent people. The Author colleced accounts by ordinary people, and some are truly horryfing, making us aware of the fact that often our own suffering makes us immune to the suffering of others.

[nastya · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know how in every election in the USA there is always a divisive question about abortions? In Ukraine one of the main issues forever was to give Russian a status of a second official language or not. It sounds kinda stupid from outside, right? I mean, Switzerland has 15 of them, what’s a big deal. Well this book shows how huge a wound and how deep it goes in Ukrainian history. Ukrainian culture and language was meticulously eviscerated by the Russian Empire and then Communist government. Moscow communists even abolished the first Ukrainian - Russian dictionary and exterminated its authors. It’s a miracle that Ukraine is a country, really. After all the bloody history. Poland, Austria, Russia, they all attacked it from all directions through all the bloody history for the fertile land and grain.
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“Ukrainians are just primitive former serfs and Ukrainian language is just a dialect of Russian”.

Reading Pachinko you see the way Japanese treated Koreans as lazy, dirty and primitive. Also a lot of the same sentiment you find in older English novels about Irish. Remind you of anything?

To make a nation that has such a fertile soil that it can give two harvests a year, starve to death, you really need to despise it. When there was a bad harvest, Stalin ordered to still give all the grain up and also pay meat and potato tax. And while Ukrainians were dying, the USSR upped the export of grain and meat to Europe. This was Genocide. And the world knew and closed their eyes to be friends with Stalin.
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Duranty was the correspondent for The New York Times in Moscow between 1922 and 1936, a role that, for a time, made him relatively rich and famous. Duranty, British by birth, had no ties to the ideological left, adopting rather the position of a hard-headed and sceptical “realist” trying to listen to both sides of a story. “It may be objected that the vivisection of living animals is a sad and dreadful thing, and it is true that the lot of kulaks and others who have opposed the Soviet experiment is not a happy one,” he wrote in 1935. But “in both cases, the suffering inflicted is done with a noble purpose.”

He got Pulitzer Prize for his work about successes of collectivisation.
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A debate broke out inside the Vatican—one faction wanted to send a famine relief mission to the USSR, another preached diplomatic caution. The argument for caution won. Although the Vatican continued to receive information about the famine, the Holy See mostly kept silent in public.

I hope he prayed for them...
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In 2005, less than half of Ukrainians used the language as their main form of communication. Ten years later two-thirds preferred Ukrainian to Russian. Thanks to Russian pressure, the nation is unifying behind the Ukrainian language as it has not done since the 1920s.
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This book was short but it was unbearably hard to read. I had to rest every few chapters and cool down my boiling blood.

P.S. Anne Applebaum is an awesome storyteller.

[Jennifer (Insert Lit Pun) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughts here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDdAy...

Discussing things like Ukrainian history and geography, the Russian Revolution, collectivization (yikes), the purging of intellectuals, and the international cover-up following the starvation of close to 4 million Ukrainians.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Red Famine: Stalin’s War in Ukraine by Anne Applebaum

The absence of natural borders helps explain why Ukrainians failed, until the late twentieth century, to establish a sovereign Ukrainian state. By the late Middle Ages, there was a distinct Ukrainian language, with Slavic roots, related to but distinct from both Polish and Russian, much as Italian is related to but distinct from Spanish or French. Ukrainians had their own food, their own customs and local traditions, their own villains, heroes and legends. Like other European nations, Ukraine’s sense of identity sharpened during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But for most of its history the territory we now call Ukraine was, like Ireland or Slovakia, a colony that formed part of other European land empires.

The Ukraine has experienced a mind-boggling amount of horror over the last century. Geographically sandwiched between perhaps the two most murderous governments in world history, Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia, we know in any scenario that it could not have turned out well for the Ukrainians. Looked down upon by the Germans and the Russians who would fight over this territory in both world wars. For Germany, the Ukraine was largely an impediment to get to Russia and for Russia the black soil and wheat fields of Ukraine were vital. If anyone ever thought communism could work on a wide scale, please read this book. There is no way that collectivism can prevent famine and in some cases causes it even in the absence of malevolence. In a non-capitalist society there is little incentive for farmers to produce more crops as the central government just takes it away and does not store the surplus. So when droughts come there is not enough food. Not too dissimilar to what happened during the Irish Potato famine where the British government would not return the non-blighted potatoes to the Irish. In the Ukraine however there was an even more insidious situation with Stalin.

The focus of this book is on Stalin’s policies toward the Ukraine for the years from the Russian Revolution through the 1930 Stalinist era. There is also plenty of historical context prior to and after this period that is provided by Applebaum. I think the analysis is the best part of the book. Before going deeper here is the list I compiled on some of the horrors of the past Ukrainian century. These are not in any particular order.

1. 1918 to 1920 Jewish Pogrom in Ukraine.

Between 1918 and 1920 combatants on all sides—White, Directory, Polish and Bolshevik—murdered at least 50,000 Jews in more than 1,300 pogroms across Ukraine, according to the most widely accepted studies, though some put the death toll as high as 200,000. Tens of thousands were injured and raped as well. Many shtetls were burnt to the ground. Many Jewish communities were blackmailed out of all their worldly goods by soldiers who threatened to kill them unless they paid up.

2. The ban on using the Ukrainian language. This started long before the Russian revolution but its effect was widespread illiteracy.

The Ukrainian language was a primary target. During the Russian empire’s first great educational reform in 1804, Tsar Alexander I permitted some non-Russian languages to be used in the new state schools but not Ukrainian, ostensibly on the grounds that it was not a “language” but rather a dialect. In fact, Russian officials were perfectly clear, as their Soviet successors.

3. The Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine in the 1980s and its harmful effects on the people there. Not much covered in this book but there is ample evidence that the lack of an adequate Soviet response to the meltdown had a lot do with Moscow’s disdain for the Ukraine.

4. The Ukraine was briefly a sovereign state from 1918 to 1921 but this changed with Lenin’s Red invasion. Apparently the Whites didn’t think highly of the Ukraine either. Hundreds of thousands died there in the Famine of 1921 and countless others were eventually saved by Herbert Hoover’s relief efforts. Yes the same Herbert Hoover who failed miserably as America’s president during the early Depression of the 1930s. Lenin, who was very reluctant to accept the aid, capitulated but continued to accuse the Americans of spying on Russia during this period of relief.

5. In WWII more than 2 million Ukrainian soldiers who were conscripted into the Red Army died on the front lines at places like Stalingrad. The number of military deaths versus the populace in the Ukraine Republic was one of the highest proportions in any WWII country. Many memorials have been installed since.

6. The heaviest focus of this book is on the death of nearly 4 million Ukrainians in the famines of 1931 to 1933. These famines were almost completely caused by Stalin’s regime. Through collectivization they forcibly took the Ukrainian wheat for use in Russia and intentionally starved many regions to suppress revolts.

7. The average life span of Ukrainians after the famine of 1932 was eight years! The Ukrainian children had been so malnourished during these years that more than half of those that initially survived did not live to adulthood. Yikes.

8. The effects on the psyche of the people from the tens of thousands of incidents of cannibalism. There is a large section of this book that speaks to the horror that is cannibalism.

9. The Nazi SS slaughter of millions of Jews and Ukrainian soldiers in WWII. Other than The Jews in Poland no group suffered more deaths attributable to the Holocaust than the Jews of the Ukraine.

10. Ukrainian deaths from the current conflict with Russia began in 2013. The thousands of deaths are perhaps as not overwhelming as some of the earlier periods in the Ukraine but these numbers are high by today’s standard of limited wars.

If you want to understand at least some of the historical reason for the bad feelings on the part of Ukrainians towards Russia then you need to read this book. We must remember that Jewish people had been living in the Ukraine since 1030 A.D and they suffered more than any group during the last 100 years and that is saying a lot.

4 stars. Overall this book was exceptionally well researched. It is a little dry in the middle though and lacks a personal narrative. Also be forewarned — the evil that Stalin perpetrates towards the Ukrainians in this book is quite detailed and graphic.

Overall I’m glad I read it. I am reading Applebaum’s more famous book Gulag next.

[Marquise · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to know what treatment Ukraine has endured throughout her history at the hands of different empires, read this book.

If you want to know which overlord was the worst to them, read this book.

If you want to know what the Soviet Union did to Ukraine during several famines (yes, plural), read this book.

If you want to learn why the Holodomor was not only the worst of these famines but a specifically man-made and well-tailored "famine within a famine" meant to punish Ukraine alone, read this book.

If you want to know why Ukrainians are currently fighting tooth and nail against Russia and won't surrender, read this book.

Hell, even if all you want is a historical context for the farmer with a tractor towing Russian tank meme, read this book!

[happy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Red Famine, the author, Anne Applebaum, does an extremely good job of explaining just what happened in 1931-'34 when an estimated 3.9 million people starved to death and why. Starting with the Russian Civil War that followed World War I, the author looks at the Ukrainian desire for independence and why Ukraine had never been able to obtain that independence. She looks at the Bolsheviks' strategy to subdue the Ukraine and keep it part of Russia and by extension the USSR.

While discussing Ukrainian desire for independence, Ms. Applebaum also looks at the Ukrainian culture, language and religion. She explains just how close the Ukraine came to independence during the civil war. She opines if the various independence groups could have cooperated with one another and with the White Russians, there was very could chance independence could have been achived. She also gives reasons as to why that cooperation never took place.

After the Civil War, the author looks at the Bolsheviks first attempts to collectivize agriculture and its failure in the early 20’s. The collectivization was not successful and less grain was collected than projected. This led to famine. During this famine, the gov’t admitted they had a problem and accepted outside help including from the US. Lenin and by extension the Soviet gov’t ended up backing down and leaving the Ukrainian agriculture system alone, allowing the peasant farmers to own their own land and animals and keep their language and religion. In this section the author also give a pretty good summation of why the collectivization failed. However, I found this section to be a little dry and text bookish.

Fast forward to the late 20’s and after the power struggle was resolved following Lenin’s death, Stalin again decides to force the collectivization of agriculture, not only in the Ukraine, other agriculture regions of the USSR. One thing I found interesting about Stalin’s initial attempts, is that they used a carrot and stick approach – the peasant could keep his land, but had to pay very high taxes. If he collectivized, the peasant would have access to the latest techniques and equipment. At the same time this was going on the Government in Moscow was in dire need of hard currency and signed contracts to deliver more grain than the area was producing. Moscow and by extension, Stalin, thought the deference could be made up with the collectivization of agriculture.

Ms. Applebaum’ s descriptions of what happened next are heart rending! I feel that her descriptions of the famine is by far the best parts of the book. They are difficult to read! She describes the efforts the Soviet Gov’t made to collect grain and other food stuffs. In addition to grain, the collectors took seeds, the produce of the small vegetable gardens people were allowed, farm animals - both food and working, any stored food, food sent in from the outside, and even farm equipment. The collectors literally took every morsel they could find, leaving both the collective farmers and the Kulaks both without anything to eat or plant the next spring. As this is going on, the author also recounts the Soviet efforts to stamp out the Ukrainian culture, language and religion.

Finally while recounting the famine, the author looks at just what extreme hunger does to people. She tells of the apathy in the starving population. People would literally step over dead and dying children as they went about their daily tasks with out a second thought. Many attempted to leave the Ukraine Steppes (which was forbidden) and make it to the cities, which were relatively well fed or out the Ukraine entirely. Finally she looks at the cannibalism that occurred and the rationale behind it. It boils down to, “They are going to die anyway so…” While not universal, parents ate children, children ate parents and many people just ate those who died. Ms. Applebaum looks at the effect of this on the culture as a whole and how some accepted it and others looked on it with horror. Ms Applebaum includes several pictures of the starving and dead that are believed to be the only photos taken of famine victims.

The final section of the book looks at how the Soviet Officials from Stalin down covered up the famine. They did this through travel restrictions, just flatly denying anyone was starving, manipulating the foreign press amoung other methods. The author looks at the NY Times correspond William Durranty’s reporting, which also denied anyone was starving in the Ukraine and won him a Pulitzer Prize. The gov’t also refused to release the 1937 census that showed 8-10 million people missing from projection and eliminated (killed) many of those who worked on it. Until the day of its breakup, the USSR denied that there was ever a famine in the Ukraine during the 1930s

To sum this up. This first half of the narrative is a little dry and some ways reads like a text book. However, when the author starts describing the hows, whys and effects of the 1931-’34 famine, it is in many ways mesmerizing. One niggling criticism, the author uses the Ukrainian/Russian spelling of all place names with out a cross reference to the common Western spellings. Some are easy to figure out, others I still have no idea. Even with that, this is still a solid 4 star read.

[Micah Cummins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum is a gripping tale presenting the horrors that occurred in Ukraine during a period now referred to as the holodomor. The word is comprised of two parts, the first, 'holod, the Ukrainian word for hunger, and 'mor,' the Ukrainian word for death or, extermination.

The period presented in this work focuses on the systematic starvation of the country of Ukraine at the hands of Stalin and the Soviet Union between the years 1932 and 1933, in which roughly four million Ukrainian men, women, and children were killed by means of starvation.

When Stalin first came to power, the people of Ukraine had a very strong sense of national pride, many considered themselves Ukrainian first, rather than Russian, or members of the Soviet Union. Almost immediately, Stalin began fearing a nationalist Ukrainian revolution that could ultimately end in the shattering of Soviet ideology, and so a ruthless Soviet purge of Ukrainian intellectuals and religious leaders began. Many Ukrainian leaders and intellectuals wanted to elevate Ukrainian to the status of the national language, replacing Russian in that category. Schools and churches began using Ukrainian rather than Russian, which Stalin saw as another step toward a Ukrainian nationalist revolution and in turn, his own loss of control of Ukrainian land, and agricultural exports.

Ukraine holds claim to some of the world's most fertile soil, and has in that light gained the rights to the title “The Breadbasket of Europe.” Because of their climate and soil, Ukraine can manage two crop harvests a year, both a ‘winter’ and a ‘spring’ wheat. This was one particular aspect that drew Stalin to Ukraine. Stalin wanted to drastically increase the industrialization and agricultural production of the Soviet Union, creating a five-year plan to accomplish his goals. In order to realistically accomplish the Soviet plan of industrialization, Stalin had to greatly increase the Soviet Union’s grain exports coming out of Ukraine to sell to not only other parts of the USSR but to the west as well, to fund the expansion.

Ukraine became the target for the heaviest collectivization. The collectivization of farms was essentially the creation of communal farms where multiple farmers would work together to produce a larger crop yield, as opposed to smaller farms producing smaller yields. As one can imagine, most Ukrainian farmers were not happy about, or interested in, the proposition of collectivization, and many were fiercely opposed to it.

In a backlash to the soaring unpopular opinion of Ukrainian collectivization, Stalin launched a massive propaganda campaign labeling those farmers against collectivization as “kulak,” a Russian word meaning a peasant of wealth. These “kulaks” were portrayed by Stalin as being greedy, and vile, along with harboring anti-soviet feelings. Those who were labeled as “kulaks” would have their homes searched by Soviet police who would confiscate any grain found to be hidden in the home. Those deemed to be “kulaks” were also subject to arrest, imprisonment, exile, or even execution. Death was the fate of hundreds of thousands of Stalin’s “kulaks.”

For those who survived the “kulak” purges, grain production quotas soared so high as to verge on the impossible. When production requirements were not met, those responsible in the eyes of the Soviets had their homes searched, and unlike their first searches of the Soviet police, not only was any grain found taken but anything edible at all, including livestock and even pets. A vicious cycle had been created whereby farmers were forced to cultivate an impossibly high amount of product, and if they failed, which was inevitable, they would be stripped of anything they could eat.

Ukrainians became so hungry that anything they found would be eaten. Rotten horse flesh, insects, leaves, bark, and grass. Those who lived near water or forests had a saving grace in the form of mice and forest rodents, as well as tree fruits and ground vegetation; those near rivers were able to fish and gather frogs and river bank vegetation. Ukrainian houses that were discovered by the Soviet police to be in the possession of grain or any other edible subsistence faced charges as serious as ten years in the gulag, or even execution.

Individuals, families, and even entire villages could be blacklisted, whereby they were completely unable to procure any type of sustenance at all. There were a select few who could earn a government stipend, but even those deemed worthy could hardly purchase an adequate amount of food for their families.

Many Ukrainians' attempted to escape the country and make it to larger cities where the effects of the famine had not hit as hard. However, it didn’t take long for Stalin to catch on to the escape routes, which led to the complete closing of Ukrainian borders. Those caught escaping were either dragged back to their villages to die of starvation, or shot.

It wasn’t until the population of Ukraine became so depleted that Stalin began pulling back his efforts to starve out the country. Stalin began sending Russian peasant families to farm the Ukrainian land, however, quotas became lighter and more realistic. It was then that the horrors of the famine began to lift, as more and more farms fell to collectivization, and larger and larger portions of Ukrainian land came under Soviet control.

Stalin and the Soviet Union went to extreme lengths to cover up what really happened in Ukraine. “Food Shortage” was often the common answer to the question of what took place. Death certificates were altered so that “starvation” never appeared as the cause of death. Even the 197 census, which showed a major decrease in population was made public. And those responsible for its recordings were killed.

It was not until Gorbachov’s glasnost policy that the USSR even made a public reference to the Ukrainian famine, or made it legal for others to do so. However, neither the Soviet Union nor the present-day Russian state has ever acknowledged their role as the instigators of the Holodomor, but history remembers, and the true story of the horrors that took place on Ukrainian soil, and who caused them, must never be forgotten nor allowed to repeat.

Applebaum has written a book that illuminates the political motivations for the horrors of the Holodomor in Ukraine, but she also doesn’t lack the human interest factor. Going from the opulent offices of Soviet officials, to the squalor and terror of the Ukrainian villages, a complete narrative, both one based on policies, and people, is presented to the reader.

[Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, what a huge reminder about how many gaps we all have in our knowledge of history! To think that so many people suffered and died within living memory and yet I had no idea. I do continue to not fully connect with Anne Applebaum's writing style, which is what kept me from absolutely loving it, but I learned a lot and it really made to mull on what "genocide" really means & if those distinctions matter in the face of mass atrocities that may fall short of that technical definition

[Manybooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Applebaum’s 2017 monograph Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine is of course not the first book to chronicle the terror and the horror of the Holodomor, as indeed Robert Conquest’s 1986 The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine is a seminal work which not only meticulously documents Joseph Stalin's intentional Ukrainian famine but that Conquest also and in my opinion totally rightfully so with and in The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine considers the Holodomor as a deliberate act of genocide against the Ukraine as a country and the Ukrainians as a people, as a a crime against humanity, as mass murder of millions specifically and on purpose created by and carried out under the direct orders of dictator Joseph Stalin and the Soviet state (and with The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine also rescuing the immense human tragedy and the murderous millions-fold horror of Stalin's terror famine from historical oblivion, Soviet and also in the 1980s often even still Western denialism totally notwithstanding).

But albeit Applebaum for Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine had much greater access to Soviet archives than Robert Conquest did in 1986 (and at least in 2017 with Russia not so keen anymore regarding denying the Holodomor either albeit I bet that this has more than likely changed since Vladimir Putin's 2022 invasion of the Ukraine) and that Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine is thus now considered to be rather the definitive version regarding showcasing, analysing and describing the Holodomor, well, for me personally speaking, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine is more readable and as such also considerably less of an academic slog than Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine has been, and equally so is Miron Dolot 1985 eyewitness account, his personal memoir of the Holodomor Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust. And with that I mean that while Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine is factually absolutely excellent (realistic, correct), is solidly researched by Anne Applebaum and textually provides a detailed and hugely informative examination of not only the Holodomor but also its background (the hows and the whys), for general reading flow, for a textually gripping, heart-wrenching and engaging account of what happened during Joseph Stalin's terror famine, Robert Conquest and Miron Dolot simply both stylistically and especially so emotionally rather outshine and outdo what Applebaum has penned and that much of Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine is more than a trifle draggingly information dropping and too textbook-like for educational pleasure reading, is enlightening, but not really all that enthrallingly or engagingly presented.

Now Anne Applebaum with Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine definitely does a generally good job regarding factually describing and explaining the life-and-death choices and struggles many Ukrainians faced before and during the Holodomor (and that no matter what they did, in particular Ukrainian farmers, especially peasants were often if not even generally pretty well doomed due to the contradictions inherent in Soviet agricultural policy but equally so because of Stalin's mentally and evilly unhinged extremist hatred and screwed up paranoia). For if Ukrainian peasants worked hard, expanded their farms and produced high crop yields (and yes, even if they supported or at least tolerated collective farming) they immediately became kulaks, they at once became enemies of the people, but if they did not, peasants went hungry but were also then often accused by Joseph Stalin and by the Soviet state as not doing enough for the USSR (that Stalinism as a system made life itself quite impossible and that after Stalin and his minions then with extreme hatred and prejudice sealed the borders and took ALL food away in the Ukraine and from Ukrainians, mass starvation, mass murder by the state, mass genocide was the obvious result (something that Applebaum in Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine relates with enlightenment, realistically and also decently empathetically but in my opinion and equally just a wee a bit dryly, sluggishly and sometimes even annoyingly emotionlessly, that this is not meant to even be an actual criticism by me of Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine but just to point out that Anne Applebaum's text is a deeply intensive historical and cultural analysis and not in any way, shape or form a story for reading pleasure and for entertainment, that Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine is meant to be primarily and in fact and defintely wholly educational).

Three stars for general reading flow and for how Applebaum relates the Holodomor regarding emotions, feelings etc. (as yes, a bit more of the latter would be good, would definitely be nice and also render Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine more approachable and less academic) but that I am still and nevertheless rating Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine with five stars for the factuality of the contents and for the thematics textually being shown, analysed and delineated by Anne Applebaum (and that there is a very much appreciated and decidedly anti Stalin and anti Stalinism vibe and slant to Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine). And indeed, for me, the most interesting and also the absolutely best (as well as probably the most important) section of Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine comes towards the end of the book when Applebaum deals with the question of whether the term genocide actually should apply to the Holodomor and with Anne Applebaum nicely and believably demonstrating how the USSR very much specifically and relentlessly lobbied the United Nations to ensure the definition regarding genocide would ONLY be associated with the race theories of Nazism rather than with Stalin's war crimes (including the Holodomor) and that Applebaum decisively demonstrates (and in my opinion also totally proves) in and with Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine that Joseph Stalin was very much akin to Adolf Hitler and that the Holodomor was a deliberate genocide by Stalin and should be seen and approached as being similar to the Holocaust (and actually in many ways exactly and totally the same regarding its intent, that there was everything deliberate and nothing random and accidental about the Holodomor).

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a feat of research and writing about Ukraine in the 1930s, and how Stalin's policies intentionally targeted Ukrainians, resulting in widespread famine and what many consider genocide. From collectivization to dekulakization, the author shows how Ukraine was stripped of its resources and culture and then punished further for not being able to provide more. I was shocked this time period is still highly debated/contested - largely by the Russian government - well shocked might be too strong of a word, after all Putin borrows from Stalin in categorizing Ukrainians as Nazis in order to justify his decisions.

For my tastes, there are so many names and so many details that the reading was sometimes a slog. However I don't know how the author could have written it without those details since she has done so well pulling them all together. I just don't read a lot of history.

This is one of the books I selected for the non-fiction quarter of Reading Envy Russia (#readingenvyrussia) - April was month 1 so you can still join in with 2 more months of non-fiction reading to go.

[Margarita Garova · Rating 5 out of 5]

“И това тук ако е живот...Скъпи братко Игнатий, ако е възможно, моля те да ми изпратиш пакетче с най-необходимото. Няма нищо за ядене, а трябва да се яде.”

Географията е съдба. Тези думи са два пъти по-валидни в случая на Украйна – “житницата на Европа”, както я наричахме едно време в час по география. Плодородната украинска земя е обект на дълголетни апетити от страна на голямата й съседка Русия – както в битието си на “царска”, “съветска”, а днес като “постсъветска”. Нацистите също смятат, че украинският чернозем може да разреши продоволствените проблеми на Вермахта. Въобще, украинците почти не са видели бял ден в историята си.

Ан Апълбаум е наистина добра в разнищването на мащабни исторически теми с яснота, аналитичност и достъпност, както вече се убедих от книгата й за сталинската система от лагери ГУЛАГ, а сега и от изследването й за Гладомора. Темата за масовия глад, сполетял украинците през 1932-1933 г., изглежда тясна само на пръв поглед.

Дългата му предистория си има своя история и тя е в собственическото отношение на царска Русия към “южната провинция”, в която живее население с език, бит, традиции, които са близки, но все пак различни от руските. Октомврийската революция донася краткотрайна политическа независимост на украинците и възраждане на тяхното национално движение, които са бързо задушени от терора на Гражданската война и последвалата болшевизация и съветизация.

Започналата в началото на 30-те години насилствена колективизация досъсипва украинското селячество. Успоредно с това, износът на пшеница извън СССР се превръща в инструмент за печелене на влияние и приятелства на международната сцена. Квотите за зърно от Украйна се увеличават до нереалистични числа. Започва принудително изземване на зърно от селяните, което далеч надхвърля целите за попълване на квотите. То се превръща в наказателна мярка, която лишава стопаните не само от посев, но и от прехрана.

Две неща са били пределно ясни на главния виновник за глада Сталин – първо, че колективизацията на селското стопанство е пълен провал и второ, че през 1932-1933 г. в Украйна и Северен Кавказ (където живее многобройно украинско население) хората не просто гладуват, тоест не си дояждат, а направо умират от глад.

Няма да се спирам върху самите проявления на гладната смърт, те са достатъчно подробно описани от Апълбаум с много и конкретни лични истории, както и демографски данни. Нито е толкова важно дали от юридическа гледна точка Гладоморът е геноцид – моралната дефиниция за геноцид по-скоро би отговорила утвърдително, за разлика от компромисното юридическо определение на международните конвенции.

Резултатът е, че масовият глад и неговите милиони жертви, съчетани с дежурните болшевишки репресии, депортации, терор и въдворяване в трудови лагери, обезкървяват украинското национално движение и физически ликвидират неговата интелигенция. Дали това е умишлена политика на Сталин или “косвени щети” с оглед крайния резултат също е без значение (може да се направи сходна аналогия с масовите убийства след деветосептемвриийския преврат – дали тези двадесет хиляди души са избити под напора на “революционния плам” или съвсем нарочно).

Гладоморът има огромно отражение върху колективната памет на украинците и неизбежно рефлектира върху руско-украинските отношения до ден днешен. Тепърва тази болна тема ще бъде художествено доразвивана в книги и филми, за да може паметта за невинните жертви да не бъде изличена. Силно препоръчвам и филма на Агнешка Холанд “Мистър Джоунс”.

[Emiliya Bozhilova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Когато военните решат, че са икономисти, хвърчат глави, и то не метафорично. А когато икономически цели се постигат с военни средства и икономически политики са приравнени на очаквани резултати от въоръжено присъствие...има смърт. Много смърт.

Колективизацията на земята в Украйна е престъпление и трагедия. Не защото считащият себе си за компетентен познавач на икономика и селско стопанство Сталин решава да ликвидира частната собственост. Не! А защото го прави варварски и неграмотно. Концепцията за грешка и корективни действия е напълно чужда на дикататурите и подчинените им бюрократи. Така че жертвите сами са си виновни, че са се противопоставили на велика и спасителна идея. В резултат Сталин интернира в Казахстан голямо количество несъгласни украинци, определени като кулаци. И, парадокса��но, по този начин спасява живота на част от тях от последвалия Гладомор. (Имам поне два случая сред мои познати, които дължат съществуването си на Казахстан...).

В климата на 1932 и 1933 г. няма нищо необичайно. Вали, когато трябва, няма суша, черноземът си е плодороден. Но селското стопанство на Украйна е съсипано от насилствена, неграмотна и варварска колективизация на земята, съпътствана с хаос, бюрократично бездействие и издирване на антисъветски подривни елементи. Да не говорим за предшествалите граждански войни след 1917 г. Така че няма кой знае какво да се сее, нито какво да се жъне, както и почти няма кой.

Москва не вярва на неуспехи, още повече ако сама ги е предизвикала, и не намалява квотите за украинска пшеница. Партийните членове от Украйна, осмелили се да отправят апел за помощ до Сталин, бързо се озовават без партиен билет и директно на Беломорканал. Под дулата на пушките се събират последните трохи зърно от домовете. Хората започват да измират. Видимо и на тълпи, пред очите на куп очевидци. Цели села опустяват. Канибализмът се шири.

Москва никога не коментира провала на политиката си, освен да посочи още врагове-виновници (партията е винаги невинна) от петата колона на някоя световна конспирация. Отговорни не са посочени, мерки (почти) не са взети, освен накрая в началото на 1934 г., за да не се затрие цялото население. Сталин лично отменя преброяването на населението на СССР от 1937 г. и разстрелва статистиците, които го провеждат.

Апълбаум разкрива геноцида в пълния му мащаб. Изследването и е систематизирано, детайлно и изпипано. Дразни много само в началото и в края с дежурните англосаксонски клишета - кой бил “коварен”, кой бил “недемократичен” (?!). Все едно слушам стара соц пропаганда на запис - да не би читателят да забрави кои са “лошите”. Не ги разбирам тези англосаксонски автори, честно, понякога пишат като заклети социалистически цензори!

Макар и без преки доказателства, тя прокарва тезата за Гладомора като умишлен инструмент за убийство на непокорните украинци и украинската идентичност. Теза, с която не съм склонна да се съглася. Не че Сталин не го е използвал и за такива цели, съвсем не! Но това се е случило при свършен факт - провалена аграрна реформа, чиито жертви няма как да бъдат спасени от смъртоносните последствие при настоящата (липса) на икономика в СССР. Създаването на колхозите е грандоманска и идиотска идея, прокарана от диктатор, който е известен с непоносимостта си към възражения. Известен е също с несклонността си към самообвинения. Щом са тръгнали да мрат от глад - ОК, и без това за нищо не стават, щом не оцениха идеята и политиката, да дадем урок на останалите, а поради икономическото положение и факта, че изнасяме храна за злато, и без това няма как да се спасят... (Това е волна интерпретация на база впечатления от прочетеното тук и другаде).

Така че за мен - на база изложените факти и впечатления - Сталин не го е планирал, госпожа Апълбаум твърде много подценява световната глупост за сметка на световната конспирация. Но го е използвал студенокръвно и не е направил абсолютно нищо, за да го предотврати и смегчи, като се е опитал да го изтрие от историята. Но все пак делата остават - или нека поне се надяваме.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Red Famine – Stalin’s War on Ukraine

As someone from a Polish family who before the Second World War lived in the Kresy (East Poland now in Ukraine) it has always surprised me how little of this war against Ukraine and her people is not widely known in the West. My Grandfather often used it as an example of how evil Stalin was in the way he allowed policy, to kill people and relieve him of a troublesome part of the country of its affluence.

As a child, he lived in Podwołoczyska, a border town on the river Zbruch, and when playing alongside the river he often heard the machine gun fire of the Soviet border guards killing Ukrainians trying to escape, in order to feed their families and themselves. He would often talk of his childhood and the knowledge that on the other side of the river Zbruch, evil things were happening to Ukrainians. After 17th September 1940, my family would also feel the wrath of Stalin.

Following rural unrest in 1932, the harvest in the Soviet Union dropped by 40%, and between 1928 – 1932 the livestock fell by 50%. One of the reasons being the peasants would rather feed themselves and their families instead of handing the cattle to the Communists.

All this from Stalin’s New Economic Plans which enforced collectivisation on the people, brought resistance, the liquidation of kulaks and a famine which would extend across the Soviet Union. Better known to Ukrainians and many East Europeans as the Holodomor, since independence has meant that this episode of cruelty and killing can become better known in the West.

Stalin knew what was going on in Ukraine, and what some readers might find hard to understand is that the Holodomor was completely man- made. It was his decisions, and that of his ministers that led to the famine, through the collectivisation of land and the eviction of kulaks, identified as enemies of the Revolution.

There are some historians who dispute the fact that the famine was man-made, I happen to agree with her assessment. Like Katyn, the Holodomor was the great unmentionable, Ukrainians could not talk about or acknowledge until 1991. Now is the time to tell the world and remind it what happened and not allow Stalin to be rehabilitated.

Anne Applebaum is not afraid to investigate and write about controversial parts of history, and the world is a better place for the light being shined into the dark corners. This is an excellently researched, well written book, this is not a dry history, this is a book that draws you in, and the writing keeps you captivated. I hope this book gets a wider audience, as it is compelling and tackle the ignorance that exists.

[Tetiana Dzhyhar · Rating 5 out of 5]

здається це перший історичний нонфікшн про Україну, який я прочитала. від цієї книги дуже боляче. в школьній програмі художня література про голодомор передає жахи того періоду, але не розуміння чому. саме тому тотально важливо читати нонфікшн. окрім усього іншого особливо зачепив розділ про занепокоєння міжнародної спільноти. спочатку (аж до 70их - 80их років) світові це все за рідкісними виключеннями було вигідно замовчувати чи робити вигляд, що не все так погано. щоб не посваритись зі сталіним. західні псевдожурналісти, які писали на благо радянської пропаганди - особливий вид дна. пройшло 90 років, а деякі події і реакції з цієї книги повторюються з чорною ідентичністю.

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has two interrelated themes - Ukraine’s path toward independence and the famine that occurred there 1932-1933.The history of Ukraine and Russia must be viewed together, and so the Bolshevik Revolution, the Civil War that followed, first Lenin’s and then Stalin’s reign are discussed too. The book starts in 1917 and concludes in the present. The famine that occurred 1921-1922, and for which international aid was given, came to be followed by the Great Famine of 1932-1933. The latter famine came to be known as the Holodomor. This word in translation means “to kill by starvation”, thus inferring that the famine was not simply due to natural causes but was instead purposefully instigated, an act of genocide led by Stalin. In an epilog, the author discusses if the latter famine should be classified as genocide. In any case, be that so or not, to understand the relations between Ukraine and Russia today, the past must be understood. It is this that is the purpose of the book. A clear and succinct introduction explains all of this. Knowing at the start that the genocide question will be discussed at the end, a reader reads with this question prominently at the fore.

The book begins with the first Ukrainian War of Independence,1917 to 1921. The February Revolution of 1917 led ethnic groups in the Russian Empire to seek increased autonomy and self-determination. The Ukrainian National Movement was formed. In June 1917, in Kiev, the Ukrainian People's Republic was declared, a sovereign state to be governed by the socialist-dominated "Central Rada". But it was short-lived. Year by year we follow events - collectivization, blacklisting, deportations, the famine of 1920-1921, liquidation of the kulaks and then unrealistic grain, livestock and vegetable requisitions imposed on a people without food. Travel restrictions so people could not flee.

The first half of the book, covering the years before the famine, were a struggle for me. I was seriously considering putting the book aside. The background information is essential, but dry in its presentation. Too many examples to prove one point. Too repetitive. Not engaging.

The famine is heartrendingly depicted. Physical and psychological effects of famine are documented. What was eaten when no “food” was available. What was done with the dead. Personal experiences are told. People who lived through the famine are quoted. There is however little reference to source material. We are told “a memoirist” or “multiple witnesses” or a “Polish diplomat” claim …… but why are we not give the names of those making these statements?! Yet I do not doubt the validity of the claims made or the horror of what occurred.

Thereafter follow chapters devoted first to a discussion of death statistics and then the years after the famine. The absence of international aid, resettlement programs, Russification, purging of Ukrainian officials and destruction of evidence that the famine had occurred. Stalin claimed the 1937 census to be invalid! It showed all too clearly how many had died. These chapters were not dry. Finally, the epilog. It presents a straightforward analysis of whether the famine should or should not be considered a genocide. Well, it all depends on whose definition one goes by – Raphael Lemkin (1900 – 1959), who coined the word “genocide” and who initiated the Genocide Convention signed on December 9, 1948 OR the United Nation’s Convention on the Crime of Genocide itself. Lemkin referred to the mass killing of Jews in the Second World War, the killing of Armenians by the Turks and the Great Famine of 1932-1933 as genocide, but the Convention, which today constitutes the basis for international law, states that genocide is a state sponsored assault on an entire group of people or on a whole nation. That not all Ukrainians were targeted means the famine should not be classified as genocide.

To properly judge the events that took place in the Ukraine one must compare these events with what was happening elsewhere. I wish more had been spoken of the famine in the Volga region and Kazakhstan. There is some information, but not enough.

I very much liked the narration by Suzanne Toren. The reading is clear and at a tempo that allows listeners time to think. Many Russian names are given in the book’s first half; these are too often hard to distinguish. This is no fault of the narrator, but it does make listening more difficult than reading. I do not like that her intonation and pauses emphasize which events are evil. I am perfectly capable of figuring this out myself! I have given the narration four stars.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Appelbaum’s “Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, 1921-1933” is a dazzling work of synthesis history that addresses much more than the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 (a.k.a. “The Great Famine”, a.k.a. “The Holodomor”, a.k.a. “The Ukrainian Genocide”). It also covers the Ukrainian War of Independence (1917-1921), the resistance of the Ukrainian peasantry to collectivization of agriculture in 1931, the attack on the use of the Ukrainian language and the elimination of the Ukrainian intellectual classes that coincided with the famine, the subsequent purge of the Ukrainian communist party, the cover-up that followed and the active assistance of Western journalists in the cover-up.
It was Robert Conquest’s “Harvest of Sorrow” published in 1986 that first established for the Anglo-Saxon world that there had indeed been a state induced famine in the Ukraine that killed somewhere between 3 and 6 million people in the Ukraine in the years of 1932 and 1933.
Conquest suggested that the famine might have been the result of a combination of unfavorable climatic conditions and communist incompetence rather than evil intentions. Appelbaum instead argues that bad weather was not in any way a factor in the disaster. Stalin had simply decided that he needed to crush the Ukrainian peasantry which had supported an independent Ukrainian state during the four years following the 1917 Russian Revolution and which had violently resisted the collectivization of agriculture. In 1932, Stalin decided to act. He ordered the seizure of grain and food in the Ukrainian countryside to create food shortages. Those districts which had most actively resisted collectivization and given the greatest support to Ukrainian independence were the ones subjected to the most drastic food seizures.
“Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, 1921-1933” is an extremely important book that should be read by anyone interested in European history in the 20th century.

[Victoria · Rating 1 out of 5]

Propaganda.

[Arthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gives a thorough overview of how Ukraine got into existing (occupied in part or full by Poland, Austria or Russia over hundreds of years), the bureaucratic bungles (read "collectivists being themselves") that set the stage for famine, the holodomor itself, and decades worth of efforts by the Soviets (and Western leftists) to cover it up.

This is an extensively researched and very detailed -it really gets into the nitty gritty so its great if you want specifics, but perhaps a bit overwhelming if you just want a more generalized overview. The first person accounts are stirring enough they will keep you up at night.

Having had access to archives that Robert Conquest did not, I believe this book now forms the foundation for English language works on Holodomor.

[Sweetwilliam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what happens when the new Director of the Department of Agriculture's only previous experience is bank robbery and murder. It is a chilling account of the crimes that Stalin and his murderous regime perpetrated upon the poor people of the Ukraine shortly following the revolution. Lining the Ukrainians' up against the wall and shooting them would have been more merciful.

Read about how Stalin stole the land and deported just about every successful farmer in the Ukraine, labeling them as Kulaks, in his bid to create class warfare. Next he collectivized nearly all the farms and imposed a plan that was impossible to achieve. Many local communists opposed it which ensured a one-way ticket to the gulag and certain death by execution. Soon, there was no incentive to work. Why farm if the State is going to just take it? Collectivization did incentivize stealing. Why not? You were only stealing from the State? Soon, bands of Communists were raiding farms in the middle of the night confiscating anything edible. They were confiscating seeds! This was an intentional starving of a people because Stalin feared that the Ukraine, with their own language and culture, had their own dreams of an independence. Stalin intended to crush their spirit by creating a man-made famine and then resettle the Ukraine with Russians! Soon, Ukrainians, driven to madness by starvation, were eating their own children. They say that the people of the Ukraine were almost lucid in color. I am haunted by the account of a mother and baby, starving, and almost transparent with the infant suckling on his own knuckles to curb his own cravings, begging for something to eat. I am haunted of multiple accounts of people escaping to the cities to beg with their last breath for a morsel of food and instead of being nourished, beaten to death while accused of being kulaks, wreakers, or counter-revolutionaries. All the while, as in the Irish potato famine, the Soviet government was still exporting grain for cash while it's people were literally starving to death!

As an American, I was sickened by the reports of the Foreign Press Corps in Moscow covering for the murderous regime so they would not lose their press passes. A few reporters were able to make their way to the Ukraine. One man in particular tried to report on what he saw - whole villages empty with the dead laying everywhere and tossing a crust of bread into a spittoon and watching a starving person dive in after it. He was discredited by notable members of the Foreign Press Corps that wanted to maintain their special access and privilege with the regime. They downplayed it as "yeah, the people are hungry but it's not that bad." This reminds me a little bit of what current NBA and Hollywood stars, CEO's, and some politicians are doing to curry favor with the Communist regime of Red China.

Eventually, the truth did leak out and several leaders of the Soviet Union/Russia admitted to the regime induced famine. Every time a Putin-like leader came into power the story of a regime induced famine on the Ukraine was down-played or even recanted. Read the truth by Anne Applebaum. Understand the motivation for a free, independent Ukraine. What a horror that the Soviets and Nazi regimes perpetrated on these people! Read this and understand another reason why Communism is the worse form of government and the worst religion (yes I said religion) ever to victimize a people on planet Earth!

I would say enjoy but there is no enjoying a book that communicates a truth as disgusting as this. Only the Rape of Nanking may have depressed me as much as this one or maybe I made it through because I'm numb from all my reading of history? This is a case of going from bad to worse as the peasants were much better off in Russia than they were than in the Soviet Union. Read this to be informed why there is a need for an independent Ukraine.

In a local news broadcast I saw recently, a college professor was debating a political commentator on the merits of communism. The college professor argued that the horror stories of communism have been exaggerated. Sir, may the tortured souls of the Ukraine haunt you to your grave and into the afterlife you naïve, useful idiot. Read this book.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Applebaum's Red Famine is an important history of the Ukraine (and USSR by default). Applebaum provides meaningful context beginning with the 1917 Ukrainian Revolution, famine of the 1920s, Stalin's agricultural collectivation policies of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and Ukrainian nationalist sentiment and peasant resistance prior to focusing on the terror famine known as the Holodomor occurring between 1932 and 1934. Holodomor is a term derived from two Ukrainian words for hunger and extermination. This famine was not created by crop failure or poor weather, it was a man made famine created by Stalin's agricultural policies, grain quotas (and associated penalties, including food confiscation inside homes, for not meeting those policies), etc. Ukrainian peasants, especially the Kulaks, that exercised resistance, were treated especially harsh. At least five million died during this famine, the vast majority in the Ukraine. Despite this tragic history and subsequent struggles, the Ukraine stands today as an independent nation.

[A.L. Sowards · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I’ve read by Applebaum, and I’m impressed. It’s not a happy book, but it’s an important book, covering a state-created famine that killed around four million people in Ukraine in the 1930s. The deaths weren’t caused by a drought, but by forced collectivization of farms, then a Soviet plan to export grain to gain foreign currency, then a series of confiscations that left peasants with nothing to eat. The deaths are tragic, made even more so by the malice behind Soviet policy. They could have been prevented. Instead, the Soviet government left men, women, and children with no food, turned neighbors against each other, and destroyed entire villages. Then they covered it up.

Applebaum also covers the years leading up to the famine, and the years beyond it up to the present. I listened to the audiobook, which had a really good narrator.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wrenching and thorough account of the way Stalin created the famine that killed easily 3.5 million Ukrainians, and maybe far more. The eyewitness testimonies of the starvation are devastating. The last chapter is an especially interesting discussion of where the famine fits in the history of Genocide. For anyone interested in the history of the first decades of the Soviet Union, this is a must-read.

[Luba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frankly, I don’t care whether we can call Holodomor a genocide or not. What I do care about is for people to remember and recognize that 4.5 million Ukrainians were killed purposefully by the Soviet State. I want people to know that “the elimination of Ukraine’s elite in the 1930s – the nation’s best scholars, writers and political leaders as well as its most energetic farmers – continues to matter.”

This is an incredibly well written and documented narrative about one of the most tragic but hidden pages of Europe’s 20th century history. A must read for everyone who does care.

[Kuszma · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Ahogy teltek-múltak a hetek, gyanús lett már az is, aki egyszerűen csak élt: ha egy család életben maradt, az annyit jelentett, hogy volt élelmük. Ha viszont volt élelmük, akkor át kellett volna adniuk – ha nem adták át, akkor kulákok voltak, petljuristák, lengyel ügynökök, ellenségek.”

A sztálini logika: ha nem vagy halott, akkor megérdemled, hogy az legyél. Működött ez a logika a német hadifogságból hazatért katonák esetében, és működött az ukrán parasztság viszonylatában is. Ez szülte a holodomort, az ukrán éhínséget, ami a XX. század nagy genocídiumainak talán legkevésbé ismert, és sokak által még mindig tagadott fejezete. A Szovjetunió történetében amúgy egyáltalán nem ismeretlen az éhhalál – végigsöpört egyes régiókon 1921 környéként is, a polgárháború és az elhibázott agrárpolitika szövődményeként, és a második világháború után is beszedte a maga adóját. De 1932-33 más volt. Az elhibázott gazdaságpolitika persze itt is adott volt – a kötelező beszolgáltatások brutális rendszere* kombinálva az erőltetett kolhozosítás programjával -, ám ha csak erről lett volna szó, az éhínség az állam minden pontján dühöngött volna. Viszont valamiért az ukránok kapták a javát (néhány kaukázusi körzet mellett). De miért?

A válasz Sztálin paranoiájában keresendő. Ukrajna már a polgárháború idején is renitens államnak számított az unión belül – a nyugatról beszivárgott európai gondolatok, valamint az első világháború végével felerősödő nacionalista gondolatok oda vezettek, hogy a bolsevikoknak többször is lázadással kellett szembenézniük. A fiatal Szovjetunió ezt kezdetben úgy próbálta kezelni, hogy támogatta az ukrán nemzeti megújulást (az önálló ukrán nyelvet és kultúrát), cserébe csak azt várta el, hogy az ukránok ezt a kommunizmus védőernyője alatt végezzék el. Csakhogy ez a módszer Sztálint egyszerűen megrémítette – a fejébe vette, hogy az ukránok potenciális lázadók, és ha lovat adunk alájuk, akkor az beláthatatlan következményekkel járhat. Visszavágta hát az ukrán autonómiát, politikai vezetőiket a gulágra küldte, majd hogy biztosan értsenek a szóból, irreális beszolgáltatási igényeket támasztott a falvakkal szemben. Amikor pedig azokat nem sikerült teljesíteni (hisz tudatosan voltak teljesíthetetlenek), akkor még büntetőkvótákkal is kirótt rájuk. Nyilván ebben ráció nem sok volt, hisz aki nem tud elég élelmiszert adni a harácsoló államnak, azt nincs értelme azzal büntetni, hogy adjon még többet. De nem is ez volt a lényeg – hanem hogy az ukránoknak rossz legyen. Hogy pusztuljanak. Pusztultak is - a közkeletű történészi álláspont szerint csaknem négymillióan. Mert Sztálin szemében az ukrán értelmiség és az ukrán parasztság kockázati tényező volt, amit minimalizálni kellett – egyfelől a gulágra hurcolással, másfelől olyan embertelen éheztetéssel, amitől komplett régiók néptelenedtek el, hogy aztán alkalmasint színoroszok foglalják el a kiürült házakat. Ezért szedte el a paraszt utolsó cékláját is, és ezért akadályozta meg karhatalommal, hogy elvándoroljon oda, ahol élelmet talál.

Azt gondolom, ezzel az egésszel illik tisztában lenni ahhoz, hogy értsük az ukránok és oroszok közti viszonyt, a sérelmek és félelmek kölcsönhatásait. Totálisan irreleváns, hogy Béla bácsi szerint ukrán nyelv az nincs, mert ő nem tudja megkülönböztetni az orosztól (ahogy amúgy én sem**). Az is irreleváns, hogy Ukrajna mint állam csak néhány évtizede létezik, és lakossága jobbára kétnyelvű. Ami számít, az, hogy az ukránok hogyan határozzák meg magukat. És az ő identitásuknak a holodomor elidegeníthetetlen része – olyasvalami, ami közösséggé kovácsolja őket, és egyben meghatározza, kitől kell különbözzenek: az oroszoktól. Valahol ironikus, hogy Sztálin terve a független Ukrajna felszámolására ide vezetett: az ukrán identitás egyik kulcsmomentumává vált. Azt gondolom, hogy Putyin háborúja is pontosan ezt a hatást váltja ki.

* Jellemző, hogy Sztálin még akkor is valutáért adta el a külföldnek a gabonát, amikor teljes régióknak még vetőmagjuk sem maradt. Mert az emberi élet nem számít.
** Valahol értem persze Béla bácsit. Ha egy ország önazonosságának egyik kulcsa, hogy az ő szép nyelvéből egy mukkor se ért senki a környéken, akkor nehezen tudja elképzelni, hogy mások nem feltétlenül ilyen alapon határozzák meg magukat. (Tessék mondani, Svájc egy ország? Van olyan, hogy Ausztrália?) Mondjuk meggyőzőbb lenne, ha mielőtt Béla emellett kezd érvelni, legalább megtanulná a magyar nyelv központozásának nemes művészetét.

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомо́р); derived from морити голодом, "to kill by starvation"), also known as the Terror-Famine and Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, and—before the widespread use of the term "Holodomor", and sometimes currently—also referred to as the Great Famine, and The Ukrainian Genocide of 1932–33—was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 that killed an officially estimated 7 million to 10 million people. It was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–33, which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country. [wiki sourced]

Description: In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization—in effect a second Russian revolution—which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least 5 million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than 3 million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them.

Applebaum proves what has long been suspected: after a series of rebellions unsettled the province, Stalin set out to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry. The state sealed the republic's borders and seized all available food. Starvation set in rapidly, and people ate anything: grass, tree bark, dogs, corpses. In some cases, they killed one another for food. Devastating and definitive, Red Famine captures the horror of ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary evil.




Red Famine by Anne Applebaum review – did Stalin deliberately let Ukraine starve?

[Iryna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Чудова і грунтовна праця націлена на міжнародну спільноту. Авторка не просто розповідає про Голодомор, як люди вмирали та виживали. Це історичне дослідження, основане на архівних документах, яке в деталях показує як голод став можливим і перетворився на інструмент покарання незгодних з совєцькою системою. Авторка також висвітлює проблему визнання Голодомору геноцидом, політичних маніпуляцій і пропаганди - засоби які використовував Совєцький союз для приховування правди, і які продовжує наслідувати сьогоднішня Росія.