eowynshelmet 's review for:

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

5.0

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Excellent book. Detailed, devastating. This helped me understand a bit better the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the deep history of entanglement and violence between the two. Applebaum's writing is clear and powerful. This goes on the shelf with histories of other human-made famines (Ireland, for example). It was especially interesting to read about Rafael Lemkin and his crafting of the term "genocide." In part, the Holodomor--the Ukrainian term for this genocide--doesn't qualify under the current definition because the USSR knew it would be held responsible and made sure that the famine wouldn't qualify. As Applebaum notes, not that this makes a huge difference in the end. Crimes against humanity are just as serious and fit the sequence of events. I was especially interested in the chapter entitled "The Holodomor in History and Memory." This chapter details how the evidence of the famine was systematically suppressed for decades. Yet the Ukrainian people secretly kept records and passed on their memories; and once various archives opened, the systemic nature of the famine became all too clear.