Red Famine

Stalin's War on Ukraine

De: Anne Applebaum

Narrado por: Suzanne Toren

AN ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag and the National Book Award finalist Iron Curtain, a revelatory history of one of Stalin's greatest crimes—the consequences of which still resonate today

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 five 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 three 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.

Today, Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, has placed Ukrainian independence in its sights once more. Applebaum’s compulsively readable narrative recalls one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century, and shows how it may foreshadow a new threat to the political order in the twenty-first.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Applebaum's account will surely become the standard treatment of one of history’s great political atrocities . . . She re-creates a pastoral world so we can view its destruction. And she rightly insists that the deliberate starvation of the Ukrainian peasants was part of a larger [Soviet] policy against the Ukrainian nation . . . To be sure, Russia is not the Soviet Union, and Russians of today can decide whether they wish to accept a Stalinist version of the past. But to have that choice, they need a sense of the history. This is one more reason to be grateful for this remarkable book."
—Timothy Snyder, Washington Post

“Lucid, judicious and powerful . . . The argument that Stalin singled out Ukraine for special punishment is well-made . . . [An] excellent and important book.”
—Anna Reid, Wall Street Journal

“Applebaum chronicles in almost unbearably intimate detail the ruin wrought upon Ukraine by Josef Stalin and the Soviet state apparatus he had built on suspicion, paranoia, and fear . . . Applebaum gives a chorus of contemporary voices to the tale, and her book is written in the light of later history, with the fate of Ukraine once again in the international spotlight and Ukrainians realizing with newly-relevant intensity that, as Red Famine reminds us, 'History offers hope as well as tragedy.'”
—Steve Donoghue, Christian Science Monitor

“A magisterial and heartbreaking history of Stalin’s Ukrainian famine.”
—Simon Sebag Montefiore, London Evening Standard

"Powerful . . . War, as Carl von Clausewitz famously put it, is the continuation of politics by other means. The politics in this case was the Sovietisation of Ukraine; the means was starvation. Food supply was not mismanaged by Utopian dreamers. It was weaponised . . . With searing clarity, Red Famine demonstrates the horrific consequences of a campaign to eradicate 'backwardness' when undertaken by a regime in a state of war with its own people."
—The Economist

“Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine—powerful, relentless, shocking, compelling—will cement her deserved reputation as the leading historian of Soviet crimes.”
—Daniel Finkelstein, The Times (London)

“Chilling, dramatic . . . In her detailed, well-rendered narrative, Applebaum provides a ‘crucial backstory’ for understanding current relations between Russia and Ukraine. An authoritative history of national strife from a highly knowledgeable guide.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A Masterpiece of Historical Work!

What an absolutely timely publication this was as we consider the tragic, yet typical in the history of Ukraine over the centuries, invasion by the Russian forces under the leadership of 'dictator' Putin. To be clear, the current invasion was not the focus of the book nor mentioned until the last chapter; however, the author weaves an incredibly well-researched and presented tome of materials that demonstrate that Ukraine has taken a beating through its tumultuous history by focusing on the period that eventually constituted the Holodomor of 1932-33 under the knuckles of Josef Stalin. True to form, the Soviet system had no room for nationalism or independent-thinking peoples within its realm directly after the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), nor under the reigns of Stalin who strong-armed and murdered his way to the top spot, and by his hand, single-handedly forced a famine of biblical nature upon the Ukrainian people that lead to one of the greatest human tragedies of all time.

This book should cement in the minds of readers why the ideology of Marxism has laid waste to more nations and peoples than at any other time in history through the abuse of power, reckless policies, and absolute inhumanity. To be fair, all governments are corrupt at some level, it's just that Marxism defines the term to a fine point. Any serious reader will come to vividly understand through this exceptional work the nature of how the 'State and Party' under Marxism will control all aspects of property, living standards, and who gets to live and die; there are no exceptions under the ideology...period! What is revealed within the pages is a horrific reflection of the worst of humanity in unabashed detail - and it is important to provide those details regardless of how provoking they may be taken. We must learn from these details the tell-tale signs of such madness and vow to limit the repetition of such atrocities even though we have signs and accounts that China is doing just that in the name of 'State and Party' against undesirables known as the Uighurs.

What's more, and of major concern for those that have ears to hear, the same language used by Stalin and his cohorts of destruction during this time, specific terms such as Nationalist/Nationalism to associate peasants with counter-revolutionary or treasonist activity, and even the use of Nazi and Fascist to identify undesirables within the peasantry, is in circulation today among Leftist elites and disciples of all stripes to control political narratives worldwide. We hear the exact same terminology used to describe Conservatives on the Right in the United States. (Note: let us remember that Nazis and Fascists were also on the Left even though modern interpretations put them on the Right, which is diametrically impossible as they were all based upon Socialist frameworks - it's just that each of these political entities was in direct conflict with each other within an ideological power struggle.)

Please, pick up the book or the audiobook, and learn from history!

Long but worth it.

if you are looking for a quick history of the Ukrainian famine that claimed upwards of 4 million people, this isn't your book. Rather. this is a well researched and detailed, with many primary sourced accounts of the man made 1930's disaster. My only issue is keeping straight all the key players, only due to the fact that i have no background in Russian or Ukrainian. but that shouldn't stop you from reading.

Very detailed description of a tragic event.

The Ukraine Genocide depicts how far human evil can go in order to sustain a bad idea, like Communism.

Important book!

This was very well written and researched. Such an important story to be told! We need to know the dangers of totalitarian attempts to silence such crimes against humanity.

Compelling history

Applebaum is an excellent storyteller and here sje is at her best. Highly recommended reading.