A Hollywood budget, important factual inspiration and a non-American director – all these features may be considered as providing the right opportunity for a high-quality movie. The latest film by Polish Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland – Mr Jones – combines all of them. Yet, the Hollywood finances and the predictable filming style became too visible, distracting from a much-needed history lesson.

a review of Mr Jones. A film directed by Agnieszka Holland, British-Polish-Ukrainian production, 2019.

The debate on the extent and nature of the Soviet famine in pre-war Ukraine, continues to engage researchers from both Ukraine and the West.

A Review of Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. By: Anne Applebaum. Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2017.

When looking through Anne Applebaum’s most recent book Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, readers interested in Soviet crimes will probably refer back to Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow. This 1986 landmark book by Conquest, a British historian, was the first to analyse the collectivisation of agriculture in 1929-31 in Ukraine and the subsequent 1932-33 famine, known as Holodomor. The Harvest of Sorrow was based on the limited historical data that was becoming available to western researchers at the time.