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2017

Format:	Book
Author:	Applebaum, Anne, 1964-, author.
Title:	Red famine : Stalin's war on Ukraine / Anne Applebaum.
Other Title:	Stalin's war on Ukraine
Edition:	First United States edition.
Publisher, Date:	New York : Doubleday, [2017] ©2017
Description:	xxx, 461 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Summary:	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.
Subjects:	Genocide -- Ukraine -- History -- 20th century. Collectivization of agriculture -- Ukraine -- History. Famines -- Ukraine -- History -- 20th century. Russian Germans -- History. Ukraine -- History -- Famine, 1932-1933.
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-434) and index.
Contents:	Introduction: The Ukrainian question -- The Ukrainian revolution, 1917 -- Rebellion, 1919 -- Famine and truce: The 1920s -- The double crisis: 1927-9 -- Collectivization: Revolution in the countryside, 1930 -- Rebellion, 1930 -- Collectivization fails, 1931-2 -- Famine decisions, 1932: Requisitions, blacklists and borders -- Famine decisions, 1932: The end of Ukrainization -- Famine decisions, 1932: The searches and the searchers -- Starvation: Spring and summer, 1933 -- Survival: Spring and summer, 1933 -- Aftermath -- The cover-up -- The Holodomor in history and memory -- Epilogue: The Ukraine question reconsidered.
LCCN:	2017029952
ISBN:	9780385538855 (hardcover) 0385538855 (hardcover)
OCLC:	1000150623
System Availability:	3
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New York Times Review

RED FAMINE: Stalin's War on Ukraine, by Anne Applebaum. (Doubleday, $35.) In this richly detailed account of the 20th-century Soviet republic's great famine, the author shines a light on Stalinist crimes that still resonate today in the ongoing tension between Russia and Ukraine. THE RED-HAIRED WOMAN, by Orhan Pamuk. Translated by Ekin Oklap. (Knopf, $27.95.) In his latest novel, Pamuk traces the disastrous effects of a Turkish teenager's brief encounter with a married actress, elaborating on his fiction's familiar themes: the tensions between East and West, traditional habits and modern life, the secular and the sacred. THE FUTURE IS HISTORY: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, by Masha Gessen. (Riverhead, $28.) Gessen, a longtime critic of Vladimir Putin, tells the story of modern Russia through the eyes of seven individuals who found that politics was a force none of them could escape. RIOT DAYS, by Maria Alyokhina. (Metropolitan, paper, $17.) This fragmentary prison memoir by a member of Pussy Riot combines dark humor and protest as it describes the author's 18 months inside a Russian prison. Alyokhina shows that refusal to submit to injustice can be enough to reactivate the rule of law. THE MEANING OF BELIEF: Religion From an Atheist's Point of View, by Tim Crane. (Harvard University, $24.95.) This lucid and thoughtful examination by an atheist philosopher resists the notion that religion is simply bad science amplified by arbitrary injunctions. Unlike the more combative atheists who caricature belief, Crane strives to offer a more accurate picture of religion to his fellow unbelievers. THE RESURRECTION OF JOAN ASHBY, by Cherise Wolas. (Flatiron Books, $27.99.) The eponymous heroine of this ambitious debut novel starts a novel in secret, after setting aside a promising writing career to raise a family. FOR TWO THOUSAND YEARS, by Mihail Sebastian. Translated by Philip 0 Ceallaigh. (Other Press, paper, $16.95.) This classic Romanian novel, originally published in 1934, centers on the anti-Semitism that flourished just before the country's turn to fascism, pitting the local against the global. LENIN: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror, by Victor Sebestyen. (Pantheon, $35.) Sebestyen has managed to produce a first-rate thriller by detailing the cynicism and murderous ambition of the founder of the Soviet Union. STALIN: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941, by Stephen Kotkin. (Penguin Press, $40.) This second volume of a projected three-volume life assiduously delves into Stalin's personal life even as it places him within the trajectory of Soviet history. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Library Journal Review

For decades, the extreme famine in 1930s Ukraine was portrayed as no worse than what resulted in Russia from Joseph Stalin's policy of agricultural collectivization. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Applebaum (Gulag: A History) places Ukraine in pre- and postrevolution historical context to show why Stalin was intent on destroying all vestiges of independent Ukrainian nationality. Government and closed police archives prove that Ukrainian peasants were especially targeted for starvation as requisitions of grain demanded by Moscow far outstripped supply. At the same time, educators, cultural, and religious leaders were murdered. The exact number of those who died as a result of famine and purges during this time will never be known, but a strong case is made that proportionally, Ukraine was devastated more than other areas of the Soviet Union. Oral histories and memoirs of victims suppressed under the Soviet regime show the human impact of starvation. This insightful book illustrates an area of eastern Europe fraught to this day with religious, nationalist, and urban vs. rural conflict yet still coveted for its fertile farmland. VERDICT This book will appeal to readers interested in Ukrainian history, Soviet policies, and the current Ukrainian-Russian conflict. [See Prepub Alert, 4/24/17.]-Laurie Unger Skinner, Coll. of Lake Cty., Waukegan, IL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

In this monograph, which is sure to be controversial, Applebaum (Iron Curtain), a professor of practice at the London School of Economics who lives in Poland, argues that Stalin's 1929 plan for agricultural collectivization was more sinister than socialist and that he sought to systematically rid the burgeoning Soviet Union of Ukrainian peasants. Her eyebrow-raising thesis is that Stalin ruthlessly used famine as a weapon to kill off Ukrainian peasants, intending to replace them with more compliant Russians to secure both a bread basket and a military front. Applebaum attempts to show how collectivization resulted in genocide and outlines Stalin's prolonged death plan for Ukraine, beginning with the Ukrainian peasant uprising of 1919 and including both its bureaucratic underpinnings and horrifying consequences. Reframing the history of this sad period in terms of hatred and nationalism, Applebaum states that in 1932, amid drought and crop failure, "the Kremlin could have offered food aid to Ukraine," but Stalin instead stepped up the famine campaign. It is an inflammatory accusation based on circumstantial evidence, and even Applebaum admits that "no written instructions governing the behavior of activists have ever been found." The Nazis also had a "Hunger Plan" for Ukraine, which according to her was Stalin's "multiplied many times," but they never implemented it. Applebaum's revisionist historiography may serve her concluding claims against Vladimir Putin's aggressions today, but it doesn't stand up to deep scrutiny. Maps & illus. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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