Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine was written by Anne Applebaum and published in 2017, and the primary focus of the book is on the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, known as the “Holodomor,” which translates to “to kill by hunger.” Applebaum provides a narrative of the famine, and argues that those who starved to death died because of Stalin’s intentional effort to kill them in order to silence all political opposition.
Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine begins with Applebaum’s discussion of how Ukraine’s geography affected its history: Ukraine was exploited for centuries for its fertile land, and it was the breadbasket of the Russian empire before becoming the breadbasket of the Soviet Union. Ukraine’s geography was very disadvantageous when it came to national autonomy and sovereignty, as while the land was ideal for growing crops, there were no geographical barriers separating it from other countries: “The Carpathian Mountains marked the border in the southwest, but the gentle forests and fields in the northwestern part of the country could not stop invading armies, and neither could the wide open steppe in the east” (1). Because Ukraine couldn’t defend itself and became an addition to the Russian empire, for many people it wasn’t seen as being separate from the empire which held it. “Ukraine” translates into “borderland” in both Russian and Polish, and the region also saw many battles being waged for control of the farmland: “Over many centuries, imperial armies battled over Ukraine, sometimes with Ukrainian-speaking troops on both sides of the front lines. Polish hussars fought Turkish janissaries for control of what is now the Ukrainian town of Khotyn in 1621” (2).
Due to Ukraine’s specialization in food production, many movements in Ukraine were populist, seeing the importance of peasant farmers. In fact, Applebaum stated that “Freedom for the peasants was, in effect, freedom for Ukrainians, and a blow to their Russian and Polish masters” (7). Along with the populist movement, Ukraine’s national organizations centered around volunteering and charity, which helped bring large numbers of people together, seeing how “National aspirations manifested themselves in calls for intellectual freedom, mass education, and upward mobility for the peasantry” (7). When the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, Ukraine, for a brief amount of time, was independent.
However, it was then incorporated into the Soviet Union and dealt with harshly and severely by the Bolsheviks. In the first attempt of the Soviets to conquer Ukraine, they fought a hybrid war in which there was little physical violence compared to the ferociousness of their attempts to replace Ukrainian culture with Russian tradition. Later, in the second attempt of the Soviets to conquer Ukraine, they made huge gains and conquered completely: “When they arrived in Kyiv for the second time, the Bolsheviks moved very quickly. They immediately dropped the pretence that they were a force for ‘Ukrainian liberation.’ Instead, they once again followed the precedent set by the tsars: they banned Ukrainian newspapers, stopped the use of Ukrainian in schools, and shut down Ukrainian theatres” (33).
Almost immediately after taking power, Lenin and Stalin were brutal in acquiring what they wanted most from Ukraine - food. Applebaum describes that the Bolsheviks were paranoid and obsessed with food because food was a common problem for the Russian armies in WW1, and the Bolsheviks wanted to prevent that from happening again. They extorted food from Ukraine and used it solely for that purpose. Later, in order to increase the likelihood of collectivization, the Soviets tried to divide Ukraine from within by creating classes of peasants: “they would define three categories of peasant: kulaks, or wealthy peasants; seredniaks, or middle peasants; and bedniaks, or poor peasants” (35). The Bolsheviks then proceeded to denounce the kulaks for all the problems which befell society, and they persecuted them the most out of every group, offering the other two groups a higher standard of living. This attempt failed miserably, seeing that the Bolsheviks “were expelled from Kyiv for the second time in August 1919,” and a massive peasant rebellion “exploded across the countryside” (39).
The Ukrainian peasant revolt of 1918-20 was a major revolt, but the Soviets put it down. While the Soviets recognized that they had won militarily, they knew they had failed to brainwash the Ukrainians on an ideological level: “The security threat waned … but the ideological threat remained. Ukrainian nationalism had been defeated militarily, but it remained attractive to the Ukrainian-speaking middle class, intelligentsia and a large part of the peasantry” (55). A truce was made to end the war in 1920, and Lenin, conducting an absurd policy, stated that all grain was to be requisitioned, even those that were “needed for immediate consumption and for planning next year’s harvest” (59). This stupid policy had the expected effect of demoralizing the Ukrainians greatly, and in the spring of 1920 the peasants reached a record low for the amount of land sown. Bad weather and drought also played a part in the decrease in productivity. In the end, the entire policy was a failure, as 95% “of the normal harvest had failed to materialize” (60). Applebaum then notes grimly that for most of history peasants could survive by relying on their surplus of food, but in Ukraine from 1920-21 all their food was taken away by the Bolsheviks, causing a famine to break out. It was noted that “peasants began to eat dogs, rats and insects; they boiled grass and leaves; there were incidents of cannibalism” (60).
Applebaum states that a vital difference between the famine of 1920-21 and the Holodomor of 1932-3 was that the famine of 1920-21 was widely recognized and seen as true - no one tried to suppress the information of starvation. Even more, the Soviet regime even attempted to undo some of the damage it did. Pravda, the official propaganda newspaper of the Soviet Union, went so far as to announce “the existence of famine when on 21 June it declared that 25 million people were going hungry in the Soviet Union” (61). Unlike the Holodomor, victims of the famine of 1920-21 received some foreign aid, so by “the end of 1923 the crisis seemed to be under control. But the delay in the delivery of aid had caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths” (65). The death toll of the famine of 1920-21 is in the millions.
After the terrible famine, the Soviet Union continued its repression, fearful that Ukrainian nationalism and culture would force them out again. After Lenin’s death and Stalin’s ascension, Stalin wanted to implement Communism on a larger scale, and he also saw it as a way to destroy Ukrainian nationalism. Stalin stated that collectivization would be implemented in 1930, which meant the end of all private property (including farmland which the farmers have lived on for many years). Most Ukrainian peasants resisted collectivization, as they didn't want to lose a large part of their identity, but the Soviets forced them off the land on the pain of death. The Bolsheviks then proceeded to exterminate the kulaks, and this was done by exiling them, sending them to the Gulag labor camps, or by murdering them outright. When it came to the facilities of collectivization, they were failures: “Almost everywhere the facilities were primitive and the local officials were disorganized and neglectful. At what would eventually become a labour camp in the Arkhangelsk region, one prisoner arrived to find ‘neither barracks, nor a village’” (131-2). As for the kulaks, so many were being deported that the Gulag system increased in size - “Between 1930 and 1933 at least 100,000 kulaks were sent directly into the Gulag, and the system grew, in part, to accommodate them” (132).
The Bolsheviks, besides enforcing collectivization, attempted to destroy many of the traditions of the Ukrainians. For instance, they loathed Ukrainian songs, like the kobzar and the bandura because it gave the Ukrainians a national identity. The Soviets also attempted to close down all the churches and to ban all the village rituals, as “The Bolsheviks were committed atheists who believed that churches were an integral part of the old regime,” seen in how in 1918-30 “they shut down more than 10,000 churches … turning them into warehouses, cinemas, museums or garages” (135-6). Ironically, the Soviets, though not religious, were superstitious and fanatics - they simply replaced the traditional idea of divinity with a human dictator who was to be worshipped, revered, and obeyed.
Collectivization also served to negatively impact family life, as land was generally passed down from generation from generation, from father to son: “Before collectivization it was very unusual for parents to abandon children, but afterwards mothers and fathers often went to seek work in the city, returning sporadically or not at all … children were instructed to denounce their parents, and were questioned at school about what was going on at home” (137). One of the most damning side effects of collectivization was that it made the Ukrainians completely dependent on the state for survival, seeing that those who worked at collective farms weren’t given a salary, and depended on the farm bosses in order to receive sustenance. What made this even worse was that many people lost the incentive to work, as they weren’t improving their own land, not to mention that they just lost all their property to a totalitarian government.
Of course, there was resistance to collectivization. One of the main instances in which resistance was expressed was in how the farmers, upon being notified of the upcoming events, would slaughter all their livestock to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Soviets. As Mikhail Sholokhov described via his pen: “Hardly had darkness fallen when the brief and stifled bleating of a sheep, the mortal scream of a pig or the bellowing of a calf would be heard piercing the silence. Not only those who joined the collective farm, but individual farmers also slaughtered. They killed oxen, sheep, pigs, even cows; they slaughtered animals kept for breeding … ‘Kill, it’s not ours now!’” (141). Applebaum then provided a harrowing statistic that shows the true extent of the resistance: “Between 1928 and 1933 the numbers of cattle and horses in the USSR dropped by nearly half. From 26 million pigs, the number went down to 12 million. From 146 million sheep and goats, the total dropped to 50 million” (141).
Aside from the mass slaughter of animals, many who were denounced as being “kulaks” decided that they had enough and became partisan combatants whose chief enemy was the Soviet Union. Despite the massive measures taken against collectivization, Stalin refused to change his mind, and even worse, published an article, “Dizzy With Success,” that stated that collectivization was an enormous success. In Stalin’s own words, “Such successes sometimes induce a spirit of vanity and conceit … People not infrequently become intoxicated by such successes, they become dizzy with success, lose all sense of proportion and the capacity to understand realities” (146). Applebaum writes that Stalin likely wrote the article not out of stupidity, as he was a workaholic who knew what was going around him, but as a form of reconciliation - “Stalin might already have sensed the potential for a backlash against him in the wake of a failed or chaotic drive to collectivization, so he sought someone else to blame. The lowest party officials - the local leaders, the village bosses - made the perfect target … the letter neatly shifted the responsibility for what was clearly a disastrous policy away from him” (147). Regardless, resistance towards collectivization continued, as in 1930 there were “13,794 ‘incidents of terror’ and 13,574 ‘mass protests,’ of which the largest number took place in Ukraine and were caused … by collectivization and dekulakization” (151).
The Soviet Union, as usual, crushed all resistance which turned up after collectivization, as “Although the protests slowed the progress of collectivization,” the Soviet Union implemented “mass arrests, mass deportations, mass repression” to put down any disobedience (159). Collectivization failed, as in 1931-2 barely enough food was produced, and this could be attributed to bad weather, the complete lack of farming equipment, poor organization, demoralized farmers, massive repressions which threatened efficiency, as well as Stalin’s unrealistic demands. From 1931-2 the word “famine” was beginning to be employed to describe the disastrous situation of Ukraine and other areas, and Stalin, in response, stated that all property belonged to the government and that anyone who attempts to steal state property (including food) would be punished with execution - “To apply as a punitive measure for plundering (thievery) of kolkhoz and collective property the highest measure of social defence: execution with the confiscation of all property” (181). Applebaum notes in the next sentence that this policy was inhumane, seeing how “The theft of tiny amounts of food, in other words, could be punished by ten years in a labour camp - or death” (181). This vicious law took many lives, as even before the onset of the famine, by the end of 1932, “within less than six months of the law’s passage, 4,500 people had been executed for breaking it. Far more - over 100,000 people - had received ten-year sentences in labour camps” (182).
In 1932, it became clear to everyone that famine was imminent in Ukraine. Stalin refused to decrease the quota for food from Ukraine, though he did entertain the notion of “reducing his unrealistic demands for grain from Ukraine in order to appear more benevolent” (191). Stalin then dictated that the first priority of collective farms was for them to provide their quotas in grain, and that the lives of those living inside them were expendable. Even worse, during the famine, “he did not offer any additional food aid, nor did he ease up on grain collection” (193). Stalin also commissioned people to go into starving villages when the time would come to find all the hidden food, and introduced the idea of “blacklists” - the least productive farmers would be severely punished. The blacklists lead to more violence, as people were condemned as “saboteurs” in a vain effort to establish a scapegoat - “Local activists in Kuban won the right to conduct their own ‘trials’ of local saboteurs, and in the weeks that followed they deported 45,000 people and imported demobilized Red Army soldiers and other outsiders to replace them” (195).
As stated earlier, Applebaum argues that Stalin used the Holodomor to murder the Ukrainian population in order to defeat the chance of them becoming autonomous as a nation, and this is supported very well with the concept of borders. That is, Stalin mandated that the borders of Ukraine and other areas were to remain closed until further notice, which basically condemned the starving population. Of course, those who were starving and still had the strength to leave attempted to leave at all costs, and some people were able to escape successfully to other areas. Others who weren’t so lucky were arrested or even executed for attempting to leave. A Ukrainian girl who successfully escaped in the middle of the night attested that “‘At that time neither Moscow nor other cities close to it were starving,’” as “‘Only Ukraine was honoured with this crown of thorns’” (198).
In order to deal with the failure that was the Holodomor, the Soviet Union, like usual, blamed innocents for the problem. It was stated by the Politburo that the reason there was a famine was because of anti-communists who operated in the collective farms and damaged equipment, as is seen in the following: “The worst enemies of the party, working class and the collective farm peasantry are saboteurs of grain procurement who have party membership cards in their pockets. To please kulaks and other anti-Soviet elements, they organize state fraud, double-dealing, and the failure of the tasks set by the party and government” (207). Soon after the announcement, it was declared that the Ukrainian Communist Party was to be purged.
Stalin also utilized the famine to destroy what was left of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, earning what could have been a national flowering of culture and knowledge the name of “The Executed Renaissance.” Many leading figures who were Ukraine were executed, and some committed suicide, considering that in the face of astounding totalitarianism, suicide was an “‘act of heroism’” (216). Applebaum then provides the following statistic: during the famine, the Soviet secret police “would arrest nearly 200,000 people in the republic of Ukraine,” and this was especially devastating considering that “the 200,000 represented an entire generation of educated, patriotic Ukrainians” (217). Consequently, what was the Great Terror for the Soviet Union was the same for the 1932-3 purge in Ukraine. This destruction of knowledge would be seen in how the Soviet Union would close many learning institutions, even the Ukrainian National Library, on completely spurious accounts - excuses include allegations of fascism. As if that wasn’t enough, the Soviet Union even abolished the use of the Ukrainian dictionary, causing mass mayhem.
When the worst phases of the famine began happening, Stalin sent people to go to Ukraine and to find all the hidden food to guarantee the Ukrainians would starve to death. The main tool used to detect the presence of food was a long metal rod, which would be used to prod any surface to ascertain whether food was hidden there. “Thousands of witnesses have described how they were used to search ovens, beds, cradles, walls, trunks, chimneys, attics, roofs and cellars; to pry behind icons, in barrels, in hollow tree trunks, in doghouses, down wells and beneath piles of garbage” (223). It was also common for the requisitioners to take all the food they saw, not just the grain, condemning many to death by starvation. It became quickly apparent that one of the best ways to survive was to have a cow which would provide milk, but many people lost possession of their cows, as the requisitioners “also led away the cows that many families had been allowed to keep, even those who lived on collective farms, since 1930” (224).
The requisitioners also utilized torture and wanton violence to get what they want, as “In Vinnytsia province a blacksmith was brought to the village committee after stealing wheat ears to feed his three children: ‘they beat him, tortured him, twisted his head completely back to front and threw him down the stars.’ In Dnipropetrovsk province men were held inside hot stoves until they confessed to hiding grain” (227). Most damningly, the requisitioners would commonly monitor people to make sure they were dying of starvation. In one instance, a survivor named Mykhailo Balanovskyi stated how the requisitioners would check on him to make sure he was starving, and that “With each passing day, demands became angrier, the language ruder: Why haven’t you disappeared yet? Why haven’t you dropped dead yet? Why are you alive at all?” (229). Applebaum then describes the requisitioners, stating that despite their self-deception, they knew that “the party leadership, at the very highest levels, sanctioned extreme cruelty that supported the removal of food and possessions from the peasantry. There was no misunderstanding at all” (240).
The starvation continued in the spring and summer of 1933, killing millions. Applebaum, before talking more about the Holodomor, describes that to die of starvation was a terrible way to die, as “In the first phase, the body consumes its stores of glucose. Feelings of extreme hunger set in, along with constant thoughts of food. In the second phase, which can last for several weeks, the body begins to consume its own fats, and the organism weakens drastically. In the third phase, the body devours its own proteins, cannibalizing tissues and muscles. Eventually, the skin becomes thin, the eyes become distended, the legs and belly swollen as extreme imbalances lead the body to retain water. Small amounts of effort lead to exhaustion. Along the way, different kinds of diseases can hasten death” (241).
Survivors of the Holodomor commonly stated that they don’t remember anything about the famine as all, as a girl who was eleven at the time stated that “‘Probably, my feelings were atrophied by hunger’” (242). One of the most horrifying sights of the Holodomor was that of vast multitudes of children with disproportionate body parts who were suffering from starvation. Indeed, most of the Ukrainian population suffered from such physical symptoms, and would suffer terribly before starvation would end their pain: “‘General weakness increases, and the sufferer cannot sit up in bed or move at all. He falls into a drowsy state which may last for a week, until his heart stops beating from exhaustion’” (243). Survivors of the Holodomor attested that the streets of the country were littered with corpses, as those who attempted to find food often collapsed and died in delirium while they were on the streets. Even those who found food commonly died, as their stomachs, desperate for nourishment, damaged themselves beyond repair - they could no longer digest anything. As a survivor attested, when he found beets and shared them with his grandmother, “Within hours she was dead, as her body could not cope with digestion” (244).
Besides the physical symptoms, Applebaum describes how entire personalities changed for the worse as survival instincts kicked in - people no longer cared about their families or friends, and thought only of their survival. For instance, “A five-year-old boy whose father had died stole into an uncle’s house to find something to eat. Furious, the uncle’s family locked him in a cellar where he died as well” (244). In another instance, “A couple put their children in a deep hole and left them there, in order not to have to watch them die” (245). A survivor who was eighty when interviewed stated that human nature was malleable according to the circumstances, as “‘Believe me, famine makes animals, entirely stupefied, of nice, honest people. Neither intellect nor consideration, neither sorrow nor conscience. This is what can be done to kind and honest peasant farmers. When sometimes I dream of that horror, I still cry through the dream’” (245). The Bolsheviks who were in the area didn't hesitate to torture local populations even further, as one communist shopowner showed no compassion or empathy as he watched a young girl die of starvation. Indeed, the vast majority of the population lost their sense of humanity, as so many were starving to death on the streets that it became mundane and commonplace.
Vasily Grossman, an author, described the process of starvation: “In the beginning, starvation drives a person out of the house. In its first stage, he is tormented and driven as though by fire and torn both in the guts and in the soul. And so he tries to escape from this home. People dig up worms, collect grass, and even make the effort to break through and get to the city … And then a day comes when the starving person crawls back into his house … He lies down on his bed and stay there … he has no interest in life and no longer cares about living … all he wants is to be left alone and for things to be quiet” (251-2). In some instances, people who were starving ate their children for sustenance, and some, realizing what they had done afterwards, were driven insane from guilt. All in all, millions died in Ukraine, and there were so many bodies that there were no people to bury them. Entire villages and communities died from starvation, and all the animals and plants in the area would be eaten by those who attempted to survive. Stalin, being the monster he was, had soldiers guard the areas where food was stored, and anyone who attempted to steal would be shot. Children who were sent into grain fields to look for food and were caught were commonly sent to the Gulags.
Despite the hellish conditions of the famine, some survived. In some instances, “Random acts of kindness saved some people, as did ties of love and kinship that persisted despite the hunger” (265). This was seen in how some families allowed others to rely on their cows, and some children were adopted into families. In other instances, relatives sent food to others who were starving, and those who had the resources sometimes hired workers and paid them food. Regardless, Applebaum states that the Holodomor killed at least 5 million people, and that it was seen as a major success of Communism - “This was in line with Marxist thinking: the sharpening of contradictions, the creation of greater stress - these were the precursors of revolutionary change. The deaths of millions was not, in other words, a sign that Stalin’s policy had failed. On the contrary, it was a sign of success. Victory had been achieved, the enemy had been defeated. As long as the Soviet Union lasted, that view would never be contested” (295).
As stated before, a main difference between the Holodomor and the famine of 1920-1 was that the Holodomor was intentionally denied by the authorities. While Stalin definitely knew of the famine, he covered it up to defend his leadership and to rid himself of a potential political problem. However, he was worried that other states would receive word of the event and criticize him. Despite the various attempts to cover up the Holodomor, news of it spread to the outside world, and some of the countries that were informed about it include Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Predictably, both refused to protest or to send aid, as they were only interested in the Soviet Union when it came to trade. Journalists in the Soviet Union barely mentioned it, as they depended on the graces of Stalin to not be expelled.
One of these journalists included Walter Duranty, a correspondent for The New York Times in Moscow between 1922-36. Stalin was able to convince Duranty to say good things about the Soviet Union - for instance, the kulaks deserved what they were getting and the Soviets were justified - by providing him with lavish gifts: Duranty’s position made him “enormously useful to the regime, which went out of its way to ensure that he lived well in Moscow. He had a large flat, kept a car and a mistress, had the best access of any correspondent, and twice received coveted interviews with Stalin” (310). Duranty, won by Stalin’s gifts, knew about the Holodomor, but chose to downplay it instead - he wrote a false article, “Russians Hungry But Not Starving,” in which he wrote that the Ukrainians and Russians were indeed hungry, but not starving. What added to the terrible effect of the article was that Duranty was admired in America, which caused his article to be believed by the vast majority of people, causing America to not send any aid. Duranty even won critical acclaim for his “journalism” and the Pulitzer Prize for his “coverage.” In recent years, an attempt was made to have his reward revoked due to his clear misrepresentation of the Holodomor, but was denied.
Although Duranty lied to appease the Soviets, a reporter who didn't was Gareth Jones. Jones went into Ukraine and saw corpses and starvation, and he published an article in The Evening Standard, titled “The 5-Year Plan Has Killed the Bread Supply.” In the article he describes the Holodomor in vivid detail and even describes his own personal interactions with the victims, but few believed him and none came to his defence since Duranty was more famous and influential. Jones himself was later kidnapped and murdered by Chinese bandits.
The worst phases of the Holodomor eventually ended, but starvation remained common in Ukraine for many years to come. The Holodomor and other Soviet policies caused so much suffering that when the Nazis entered Ukraine, they were welcomed with open arms, as people thought that Soviet totalitarianism had ended. Unfortunately, the Nazis were just as cruel as the Soviets, as Heinrich Himmler wrote to Hitler that the population of Kyiv “were racially inferior and could be discarded: ‘One could easily do without eighty to ninety percent of them’” (324). During the Holocaust, the Nazis would murder “Two out of every three Ukrainian Jews,” which translates to “between 800,000 and a million people” (322).
After WWII and the end of Nazi rule, Ukraine fell back under Soviet control again, and talking about the Holodomor was made illegal. Many times, the Soviets would state that those who talked about the Holodomor were Nazis and fascists, and that the event was completely fabricated. This is still widely believed in Russia today, as the attitude of disdain towards supposedly dishonest and rebellious Ukrainians continues to the present. The Holodomor isn’t recognized as a genocide by many countries, including the US, due to the unconventional method of execution used, as well as to the potential embarassment nations will have to deal with if they are to admit that they did nothing during the atrocity.
To reiterate briefly, Applebaum writes that she strongly believes the Holodomor was a genocide, as Stalin demanded for all the food to be taken from the peasants, for those who tried to survive by stealing food to be shot, by closing down borders, by destroying Ukrainian culture during the famine by offering basic sustenance at ludicrous prices (for instance, family heirlooms were traded for only a piece of bread), by denying that it ever took place, and by punishing those who even mentioned the word “famine” in his presence. Today the Holodomor is a relatively obscure event, but that doesn’t take away from its horror and repugnant evil. Just because an event isn’t widely known doesn’t mean that it didn't happen, as history clearly demonstrates time and time again.
Applebaum ends her book on a somewhat positive note, as Ukraine is an autonomous country today and has survived the attempts of Soviet totalitarianism to obliterate its inhabitants and culture. As she puts it, “In the end, Ukraine was not destroyed. The Ukrainian language did not disappear. The desire for independence did not disappear either - and neither did the desire for democracy, or for a more just society, or for a Ukrainian state that truly represented Ukrainians. When it became possible, Ukrainians expressed these desires. When they were allowed to do so, in 1991, they voted overwhelmingly for independence. Ukraine, as the national anthem proclaims, did not fail” (359). Applebaum also mentions, somewhat ironically, that Stalin, despite his frenzied efforts, failed to ruin Ukraine, as even though many Ukrainians died and others were sent to Gulags, “A generation of Ukrainian intellectuals and politicians was murdered in the 1930s, but their legacy lived on. The national aspiration, linked, as in the past, to the aspiration for freedom, was revived in the 1960s … A new generation of Ukrainian intellectuals and activists reappeared in the 1920s” (359). This clearly demonstrates that history isn’t read - it’s lived and experienced, and it is truly impossible to predict what will happen in the future, for better or for worse.
Personal thoughts:
Red Famine is yet another great book by Anne Applebaum. The Holodomor, despite the catastrophic damage it did, is a relatively obscure historical event, and Applebaum does a fantastic job when it comes to describing what led to it, how people reacted to the famine, as well as connecting it to the present day. Red Famine is shorter than her other two books, Iron Curtain and Gulag, but it is by no means easier to read, for it tells a tale which involves a people who were terribly affected by tremendous malice, cruelty, and indifference. However, what makes the story easier to read in some parts are cases of generosity, honesty, and even bravery. I highly recommend Red Famine to anyone interested in European history, human nature, the relationship a government has with their people, and the importance of history.
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