In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. Red Famine shows how this happened, who was responsible, and what the consequences were. The book draws on a mass of archival material and first-hand testimony. It includes accounts by survivors describing what human beings can do when driven mad by hunger. It shows how the Soviet state used propaganda to turn neighbours against each other in order to expunge supposedly ‘anti-revolutionary’ elements. It also records the actions of extraordinary individuals who did all they could to relieve the suffering. The famine was rapidly followed by an attack on Ukraine’s cultural and political leadership – and then by a denial that it had ever happened. The Soviet authorities were determined not only that Ukraine should abandon its national aspirations, but that the country’s true history should be buried along with its millions of victims. Red Famine, a triumph of scholarship and human sympathy, is a milestone in the recovery of those memories and that history.
Review: An exhaustive, authoritative and eloquent book. She deals with questions that have hitherto lacked unequivocal answers — Donald Rayfield * Literary Review * Her account will surely become the standard treatment of one of history’s great political atrocities — Timothy Snyder * Washington Post * Compelling in its detail and in its empathy — Nick Rennison * The Sunday Times * Magisterial and heartbreaking — Simon Sebag Montefiore * Evening Standard * Meticulously researched, blisteringly written — Dominic Sandbrook * The Sunday Times (Books of the Year) *
Format: Paperback
Pages: 512
Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
Publication date: 05/07/2018
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