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A review by sbaar
Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, 1921-1933 by Anne Applebaum
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.