Russia’s wars on Ukraine

The 1990s and the political transformations that took place in Ukraine have since brought new opportunities to access historical archives, including those related to Holodomor. As the Ukrainian archives opened up, historians of Ukraine started to organise and participate in international research projects to uncover the truth of the famine and publish their findings in academic publications. Their work largely contributed to the expansion of our knowledge of the 1930s in the Soviet Union in general and in Ukraine in particular. Applebaum’s Red Famine is one more contribution to this growing knowledge. It reflects – as we can read in the book’s preface – “a quarter-century’s worth of scholarship on Ukraine”.

Raising awareness

In her attempt to tell the story of the famine, Applebaum bases her analysis on a wide range of historical sources. Among them are monographs, archival materials as well as recorded conversations with the survivors collected through oral history projects. That is why Red Famine can be considered a history book. She acutely compiles the findings of the most important research on Holodomor since Ukraine’s independence. Yet, for this very same reason, Applebaum’s work should not be treated as significantly ground-breaking. Its value lies in something else. Despite being labelled by The Economist as “the history book of 2017”, Red Famine’s greatest asset is that it gives an account of the Holodomor famine in a lucid manner that will appeal to a  wide audience. In this way, the book resembles Conquest’s Harvest of Sorrow, drawing the world’s attention to Ukraine and its history.

Applebaum opens her analysis in 1917 with a reconstruction of Soviet policies towards Ukraine, which eventually led to the Holodomor. She traces the effects of the 1917 revolution and the Ukrainian national movement (destroyed in 1932-33), investigating Ukraine’s attempts to create an independent state. In this context, the author provides evidence that Stalin policies led to serious tension between the Soviet power apparatus and social groups in Ukraine. The former used collectivisation to effectively eliminate enemies, de-Ukrainianise the public sphere and disintegrate society. As Applebaum recounts, Stalin understood very well that without total subordination to Moscow, Ukraine would pose a threat to the whole Soviet system. She convincingly argues that the Soviet leader’s policies introduced in the early 1930s, which led the Great Famine, were both planned and brutally implemented. The overall aim was to destroy any traces of Ukrainian identity.

As expected, the chapter which describes the course of the 1933 famine is gruesome and shocking at the same time. Applebaum asks the question whether Holodomor should, as  it is argued by Ukrainians, be labelled genocide. If the language of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is to be applied, Holodomor does not meet the criterion of being a crime “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. Such description is applicable to the Holocaust. However, if we apply a broader interpretation of the term, as suggested by Raphael Lemkin who coined it, Ukraine’s Holodomor could then be regarded as a “classic example of Soviet genocide”.

Commentary on the present

To illustrate how Red Famine contributes to drawing the world’s attention to Ukraine, it is important to take note of the book’s last chapter, titled “The Holodomor in History and Memory”, and the “Epilogue: The Ukrainian Question Reconsidered”. Here, Applebaum discusses memory in Russian-Ukrainian relations and makes references to contemporary events. In this way, the book does not resemble a conventional history book. In some ways it is like an anthropological or political science study, even if the author has argued against that account. Applebaum stresses that the idea of the book emerged to her in 2010, and while writing Red Famine she was not inspired by the 2013-14 Revolution of Dignity or Ukraine’s war with Russia that erupted afterwards;  so the publication is not a commentary on the current situation in Ukraine.

However, we cannot help but have the impression that the opposite is true. Applebaum herself puts this statement into question – albeit unintentionally – when she writes that the Ukrainian revolution, the early years of Soviet Ukraine, the mass repressions of Ukrainian elite and of course  the Holodomor are all a “crucial backstory that underlines and explains” the current developments. The book thus shows the many parallels between historical and contemporary events. The best illustration is the phrase “hybrid war” used by Applebaum when writing about events that took place almost a century before it was even coined.

In a similar way, when describing nationalistic tendencies among Ukrainian intelligence in the 1920s, she focuses on Mykhailo Boychuk who postulated that Ukrainian culture should be protected from Russia by a wall – one that would not even let a bird fly through. Today’s Ukrainian state is erecting such a wall, literally and symbolically. Its foundations are being built on the eastern border while the widespread de-Russification of the public sphere and education shows an increasing separation from Russia’s spiritual influence.

For a similar reason we can find in Red Famine a description of Mykola Skrypnyk’s tragic story. This devoted Bolshevik, who supported Ukrainianisation, was accused by the communist party of forcing Ukrainian ideas onto Russian children. Not able to handle the accusations, Skrypnyk died by suicide while the Soviets continued their fight against Ukrainian intelligentsia, all under the cover of defending the rights of Russian-speaking children. As history has showed, Russia has replicated this tactic in its relations with Ukraine on many occasions – most recently, with tragic effects.

State of denial

Finally, Applebaum discusses the differences in assessment between Ukraine and Russia. She points out that the Soviet authorities systematically refused to recognise that Stalin’s policy took the lives of millions of people. This issue was a complete taboo until the 1990s. It was only after Ukraine regained independence that Ukrainians started to commemorate the memory of the victims, and the Holodomor became an item on the political agenda. Today’s Russia, being the successor state to the Soviet Union, equally rejects the possibility of Stalin’s responsibility for the Holodomor. The Kremlin authorities openly deny that there were millions of Holodomor victims, while anyone from Ukraine who brings this topic up is accused of being a nationalist or fascist.

Here we can get to the essence of Appleabaum’s motivation for writing about the Holodomor. Stressing that her work should not be treated as an argument by any side of the current political conflict in Ukraine, Applebaum envisioned Red Famine as a study that would help readers understand what happened in the 1930s. Her conclusions, however, show that the claim of being apolitical is solely a declaration. Unquestionably, Applebaum takes a political stance, although one that refers to the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia. This conflict influences Ukrainian politics to this day: Indeed it is quite easy to point out which politicians in Ukraine are inspired by Moscow.

Thus, Applebaum’s political voice is evidently directed against the current Kremlin authorities. How else can we interpret the book’s epilogue where Applebaum writes that “Today’s Russian government uses disinformation, corruption and military force to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty just as Soviet governments did in the past. As in 1932, the constant talk of ‘war’ and ‘enemies’ also remains useful to Russian leaders who cannot explain stagnant living standards or justify their own privileges wealth and power.”  It is clearly an illustration that Red Famine is just as much about the Holodomor as it is about Russian policies towards Ukraine in their numerous historical reincarnations.

Translated by Iwona Reichardt

Wojciech Siegień is a lecturer in the department of cultural and educational research at the Pedagogical Institute at the University of Gdańsk.

Anne Applebaum, Book review, Holodomor, Red Famine, Ukraine