danicapage's review against another edition
5.0
4.5
First I knew little about this topic before reading the book, so I can’t rate from that perspective.
But I found this book to be extremely informative. I learned so much, which is exactly what I was hoping for.
Well written.
First I knew little about this topic before reading the book, so I can’t rate from that perspective.
But I found this book to be extremely informative. I learned so much, which is exactly what I was hoping for.
Well written.
leelulah's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
It felt a bit dense at first, but thrn it gained momentum. Its so sad that in the end the USSR got its way even after WWII. The denial narrative, the accusations of fanatical nationalism and Nazism against Ukraine, while Nazis planned to do the exact same, and there were Ukrainian soldiers in the troops that helped defeat Hitler are ridiculous. They, the USSR, even got away with reshaping the definition of genocide so that they wouldn't get accused of it.
Memory eternal to all victims, dissidents and truth bearers who dared to speak out.
Memory eternal to all victims, dissidents and truth bearers who dared to speak out.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Genocide, Mental illness, Deportation, Hate crime, Torture, Colonisation, War, Xenophobia, Chronic illness, Cannibalism, Child death, Death, and Eating disorder
sbaar's review against another edition
5.0
I opened this book with the knowledge most people have. The Holodomor was a famine in Ukraine that killed millions of people. Every aspect of why and how are documented here to paint an utterly complete picture.
Red Famine tells the story of Soviet repression. How year after year the cultural intelligentsia and civil society were decimated and repressed, exiled, and eliminated. For decades Ukrainian nationalism was subverted and fractured and famine by mostly natural causes was exacerbated by civil war but ameliorated by foreign aid and honest effort. From there, things get worse.
Applebaum is able to document exactly what crossed Stalin's desk, how he responded, how local activists acted and were disillusioned, and how nearly every action destroyed the countryside. Taxes turned to percentages turn to absolute requisitions. Criminal elements were exploited to persecute kulaks. Internal dissent was eliminated or ignored. Special shops existed to sell food for jewelry to extract the last of wealth for Stalin's international ambitions.
Ukraine was a tempest of bad policy, bad decisions, paranoia, and the cruelest inhumanities for the sole purpose of crushing dissent and extracting resources. You will not be able to look away from this book, and you shouldn't.
The last 50 pages draw a direct line from the bad history of the Soviet Union to the forces that conspire to deny Ukrainian determination and history. The whole world and those leaders after Stalin were so unmoved by their legacy that generations continue to be shocked at the unknown history of this country, even though their struggle continues.
Red Famine tells the story of Soviet repression. How year after year the cultural intelligentsia and civil society were decimated and repressed, exiled, and eliminated. For decades Ukrainian nationalism was subverted and fractured and famine by mostly natural causes was exacerbated by civil war but ameliorated by foreign aid and honest effort. From there, things get worse.
Applebaum is able to document exactly what crossed Stalin's desk, how he responded, how local activists acted and were disillusioned, and how nearly every action destroyed the countryside. Taxes turned to percentages turn to absolute requisitions. Criminal elements were exploited to persecute kulaks. Internal dissent was eliminated or ignored. Special shops existed to sell food for jewelry to extract the last of wealth for Stalin's international ambitions.
Ukraine was a tempest of bad policy, bad decisions, paranoia, and the cruelest inhumanities for the sole purpose of crushing dissent and extracting resources. You will not be able to look away from this book, and you shouldn't.
The last 50 pages draw a direct line from the bad history of the Soviet Union to the forces that conspire to deny Ukrainian determination and history. The whole world and those leaders after Stalin were so unmoved by their legacy that generations continue to be shocked at the unknown history of this country, even though their struggle continues.
jennderqueer's review against another edition
5.0
Readable, understandable, accessible. The famine of 1932-33 was horrific and this book does not shy away from it. If you want to know how awful Stalinist policies actually were, start here.
vanjr's review against another edition
3.0
A nice balanced view of the famines in Ukraine in both the early 1920s and early 1930s as well as a chapter at the end discussing the relevance to current world events. Not a difficult read. Well referenced and discusses other books on the subject that represent both sides of the issue.
faiththompson416's review against another edition
I will come back to this one someday, but for right now, it's too raw, too difficult.
racheleileen25's review against another edition
4.0
This is an important book full of history, tragedy, and insight into the impact of the Russia-Ukraine relationship. Most of it is tragic and heartbreaking. Giving g it a 4 out of 5 as the first half is extremely dense and at times very hard to get through. I still recommend it as an important piece of history you may not have heard about much before.
mdrfromga's review against another edition
5.0
A sobering account of the horrific famine Ukrainians suffered at the hands of Joseph Stalin and his communist minions. Not only did USSR leadership cause the deaths of so many people, but they tried to whitewash the historical account. Truly heartbreaking to learn the depths of suffering those people went through.
bookly_reads's review against another edition
5.0
This is not a review. I'm taking notes so that I can remember later. Stalin forced much of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine in particular, into a state of unprecedented famine and despair.* This was caused partly by forcing independent peasant farmers onto inefficient collective farms and then sending agents in to requisite the wheat they grew. Over time this expanded to forbidding the peasants from growing their own personal gardens, possessing livestock, or engaging in trade. They were forbidden from purchasing salt or matches, and so did not have the means to cook any food they might be able to find. Those who "stole" food were executed. People who survived did so by eating rats, grass, ants, tree bark, fish from rivers if they were lucky, and human flesh.
While much of the food collected from the peasants was sent to industrial centers, a lot of it was also deliberately spoiled upon collection, simply for the sake of depriving peasants of any food at all. Borders were closed to prevent Ukrainians from escaping—one of the policies that made the famine particularly harsh in Ukraine. 3.9 million people died in Ukraine in 1932-33.
This was followed by a brief but hellish Nazi occupation, then further Soviet repression for many decades, during which time the gap between public and private memory widened disorientingly. In 1987, Douglas Tottle, a Canadian labor activist, published a book of fraudulent history arguing that the Holodomor had happened but had not been caused deliberately by the state, and that any beliefs to the contrary could be held only by Nazis. This set the framework of accusing Ukrainian people of being Nazis when they assert their independence, which we have seen Russia do while acting on its imperial impulses in the 2000s.
Stalin himself never denied that a mass famine caused by the State occurred; his defense was always, during and after, that the Ukrainians had it coming for not being suitably communist and for clinging to their national identity. The man who coined the word "genocide," Raphael Lemkin, spoke of the Holodomor as a classic example of genocide. That it has not been recognized as such by international courts is "hardly surprising, given that the Soviet Union itself helped shape the [legalistic] language [of genocide] precisely in order to prevent Soviet crimes, including the Holodomor, from being classified as 'genocide.'"
The historian Tim Snyder writes that, until we deliberately pivot away from the paradigms of history built by Nazis and Communists themselves, "we will find that Hitler and Stalin continue to define their own works for us." He's completely right. I never learned about the Holodomor in school. As a student in 21st century America I was taught to conceive of Eastern Europe in bizarrely Soviet terms: There is Russia, and then a bunch of countries that don't matter, places with inconsequential histories. Stalin would be thrilled that this conceptualization has lingered in the West for so long. (I also didn't know he'd had a wife and that she'd committed suicide; another thing he covered up during his lifetime, and would probably be pleased to know is still kept on the down low.)
Historians have done the work to reset these narratives—and are still doing that work. Yet it hasn't entered public thought or school curricula in the U.S. There's an enormous amount of catching up to do.
*I don't like the phrasing that Stalin's "economic policies" caused the famine. Sending agents to break into homes and shoot children who are in possession of meager ears of wheat is not an economic policy, it's a crime against humanity.
While much of the food collected from the peasants was sent to industrial centers, a lot of it was also deliberately spoiled upon collection, simply for the sake of depriving peasants of any food at all. Borders were closed to prevent Ukrainians from escaping—one of the policies that made the famine particularly harsh in Ukraine. 3.9 million people died in Ukraine in 1932-33.
This was followed by a brief but hellish Nazi occupation, then further Soviet repression for many decades, during which time the gap between public and private memory widened disorientingly. In 1987, Douglas Tottle, a Canadian labor activist, published a book of fraudulent history arguing that the Holodomor had happened but had not been caused deliberately by the state, and that any beliefs to the contrary could be held only by Nazis. This set the framework of accusing Ukrainian people of being Nazis when they assert their independence, which we have seen Russia do while acting on its imperial impulses in the 2000s.
Stalin himself never denied that a mass famine caused by the State occurred; his defense was always, during and after, that the Ukrainians had it coming for not being suitably communist and for clinging to their national identity. The man who coined the word "genocide," Raphael Lemkin, spoke of the Holodomor as a classic example of genocide. That it has not been recognized as such by international courts is "hardly surprising, given that the Soviet Union itself helped shape the [legalistic] language [of genocide] precisely in order to prevent Soviet crimes, including the Holodomor, from being classified as 'genocide.'"
The historian Tim Snyder writes that, until we deliberately pivot away from the paradigms of history built by Nazis and Communists themselves, "we will find that Hitler and Stalin continue to define their own works for us." He's completely right. I never learned about the Holodomor in school. As a student in 21st century America I was taught to conceive of Eastern Europe in bizarrely Soviet terms: There is Russia, and then a bunch of countries that don't matter, places with inconsequential histories. Stalin would be thrilled that this conceptualization has lingered in the West for so long. (I also didn't know he'd had a wife and that she'd committed suicide; another thing he covered up during his lifetime, and would probably be pleased to know is still kept on the down low.)
Historians have done the work to reset these narratives—and are still doing that work. Yet it hasn't entered public thought or school curricula in the U.S. There's an enormous amount of catching up to do.
*I don't like the phrasing that Stalin's "economic policies" caused the famine. Sending agents to break into homes and shoot children who are in possession of meager ears of wheat is not an economic policy, it's a crime against humanity.