Red Famine Explained

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine
Author:Anne Applebaum
Country:United States
Genre:Non-fiction
Set In:Ukraine
Publisher:Allen Lane, Doubleday, Penguin Random House
Pub Date:2017
Media Type:Print (hardback and paperback)
Pages:512
Awards:Lionel Gelber Prize, Duff Cooper Prize
Isbn:978-0-241-00380-0
Oclc:1056194977
Language:English
Preceded By:From a Polish Country House Kitchen
Followed By:Twilight of Democracy

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine is a 2017 non-fiction book by American-Polish historian Anne Applebaum, focusing on the history of the Holodomor.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] The book won the Lionel Gelber Prize[8] and the Duff Cooper Prize.[9]

The book received a number of positive reviews from the mainstream Western press, such as The New York Times[10] and The Guardian;[11] however, there were also negative reviews by some academics.[12] [13]

Reviews

Taras Kuzio writing for the Europe-Asia Studies in 2018 said that Applebaum's book follows in the footsteps of Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow (1986), but benefits from improved access to Soviet archives. He also says that her work is also more up to date, touching upon issues such as post-communist, 21st century Russian disinformation. He says that the discussion of Holodomor denial and cover-up is the strongest part of her book, and concludes that Red Famine is a "masterful", up-to-date 21st-century topic.

Stephen G. Wheatcroft writing for Contemporary European History, states that, right from the beginning, Applebaum indicates that she thinks that the famine was a result of someone's mentality and her objective is to find out who to blame for it. Wheatcroft says that her view conforms to "an increasingly popular trend in Soviet history to ignore or oversimplify complex economic explanations and to reduce everything to moral judgments". He additionally criticized Applebaum for her treatment of grain availability in Ukraine, which, according to Wheatcroft, "epitomizes the dangers of misunderstanding the [archival] data" and for other "factual[ly] incorrect" information.

In writing for the History News Network, Mark Tauger criticized Applebaum's usage of Ukrainian nationalist arguments, which stressed the distinction between Russian and Ukrainian cultures and farming methods, while downplaying Stalin's simultaneous purges against Russian intellectuals and famines in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Tauger concluded that "it leaves out too much important information, has false claims on key points, and draws unjustified conclusions on important issues based on incomplete use of sources, making it not even close to the level of genuine scholarship".

Christophe Guilluy states that "the treatment of the famine itself ... is moving and largely convincing", but that "the book’s weakness is the historical framework into which Applebaum seeks to place the events", which suffers from "nationally centered narratives".[14]

See also

Notes and References

  1. Kuzio. Taras. 2018-09-14. Red Famine. Stalin's War on Ukraine. Europe-Asia Studies. en. 70. 8. 1334–1335. 10.1080/09668136.2018.1520510. 54880488. 0966-8136.
  2. Crocco. Natalia Paola. 2020-05-07. Book Review: Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine. Genocide Studies and Prevention. 14. 1. 164–165. 10.5038/1911-9933.14.1.1725. 1911-0359. free.
  3. Whitehorn. Alan. 2018-06-01. Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum. Genocide Studies International. 12. 1. 120–124. 10.3138/gsi.12.1.08. 165926054. 2291-1847.
  4. Web site: Onaciu. Vlad. 2018-05-09. Book review: red famine: Stalin's war on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum. 2020-08-31. LSE Review of Books. en.
  5. Web site: 2019-04-25. Anne Applebaum. Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine. (Book Review). 2020-08-31. Forum For Ukrainian Studies. en-US.
  6. Siegień. Wojciech. 2018. Russia's wars on Ukraine. New Eastern Europe. en. 32. 3–4. 192–195. 2083-7372.
  7. Hordijk. Frank. 2019-11-11. Book Review—Anne Applebaum's Red Famine (2017). Nordlit. en. 42. 381–390–381–390. 10.7557/13.5021. 1503-2086. free.
  8. Web site: Prize. The Lionel Gelber. Anne Applebaum's Red Famine Wins the 2018 Lionel Gelber Prize. 2020-04-13. www.newswire.ca. en.
  9. Web site: Past Winners of The Duff Cooper Prize - The Duff Cooper Prize. 2020-04-13. www.theduffcooperprize.org.
  10. News: Snyder. Timothy. The deliberate starvation of millions in Ukraine. en. The New York Times. 2019-04-04.
  11. News: Fitzpatrick. Sheila. Red Famine by Anne Applebaum review – did Stalin deliberately let Ukraine starve?. en. The Guardian. 2019-04-04.
  12. Stephen . Wheatcroft . Stephen G. Wheatcroft . 2018 . The Turn Away from Economic Explanations for Soviet Famines . . 27 . 3 . 465–469 . 10.1017/S0960777318000358 . free . 10536/DRO/DU:30116832 . free .
  13. Web site: Tauger. Mark. 1 July 2018. Review of Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine". History News Network.
  14. Gilley, Christopher: review of 'Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine', Reviews in History, November 2017