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evamadera1 's review for:
Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, 1921-1933
by Anne Applebaum
informative
sad
medium-paced
In this book, Applebaum tackles a subject that many know little if anything about. Reading this book while keeping in mind the current terrible conflict, helped me understand so much and deepened my grief for the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine.
Although Applebaum does not limit her work to the specific years of the famine, the majority of the book chronicles the man-made famine that the Soviet Union inflicted on the people of Ukraine that lasted primarily through 1932-33. The history that bookends this major portion helps contextualize the famine as well as the famine's absence from most major works of history for significant periods of time. As someone who has studied the Armenian genocide and the concerted efforts by generations of leaders in Turkey to obfuscate the events, the chapter on the matching actions of the Soviet Union had a particularly poignant impact. This chapter also helped contextualize so much of the murky, complicated relationship between Russia and Ukraine both before and during the current conflict which in reality started back in 2014 or even earlier.
I highly recommend this book.
Although Applebaum does not limit her work to the specific years of the famine, the majority of the book chronicles the man-made famine that the Soviet Union inflicted on the people of Ukraine that lasted primarily through 1932-33. The history that bookends this major portion helps contextualize the famine as well as the famine's absence from most major works of history for significant periods of time. As someone who has studied the Armenian genocide and the concerted efforts by generations of leaders in Turkey to obfuscate the events, the chapter on the matching actions of the Soviet Union had a particularly poignant impact. This chapter also helped contextualize so much of the murky, complicated relationship between Russia and Ukraine both before and during the current conflict which in reality started back in 2014 or even earlier.
I highly recommend this book.