Abstract
The theme setting and particular relevance of artificial or man-made famines seems to come up in intervals, when tensions re-arise between ‘Western’ powers and Russia and seems to be useful for the purposes of ‘demonizing’ ‘Putin’—the current President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin (2000–2008; 2012–)—, ‘the Kremlin’, the Russian government; or simply ‘Russia’ in the eyes of ‘the West’. In recent years, the famine of 1932–1933 has reached new heights as a politicized event to be instrumentalized in a ‘memory war’ on many discursive levels (history, mass media, memorialization, etc.) between key-representatives of the current countries Ukraine and Russia (Hordijk 2018). This should, symptomatically, remind us of the sheer power that media narratives have in shaping public imaginations.
 The reviewed book: Anne Elizabeth Applebaum. Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. ISBN-13: 978–0–241–00380–0. London: Allen Lane, September 2017. Hardcover; 512 pages; recommended retail price: £25.00.
Highlights
Written by Anne Applebaum, Red Famine is a detailed historical account of the famine of 1932–1933 which engulfed ‘Soviet Ukraine’ (Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, 1919 [1922]–1936; Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic [UkrSSR], 1936–1991)—an event known as the ‘Holodomor’.2 The Holodomor is considered to be the second great famine since the inception of the ‘Soviet Union’ (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR], 1922–1991) and it cost millions of lives, with numbers ranging from 3 to 10 million.3 In comparison, the first great famine in ‘Soviet Russia’ (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic [SFSR], 1917 [1922]–1991) claimed approximately 5 million lives in 1921–1922
Ukraine—while typically characterizing Ukraine as the ‘victim’ and Russia as the ‘aggressor’. This view is reflected in the preface of her new book: The Maidan revolution [sic] of 2014, Yanukovych’s decision to shoot at protesters [sic] and flee the country, the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea [sic], the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine [sic] and the accompanying Russian propaganda campaign [sic] all unexpectedly put Ukraine at the centre of international politics while I was working on this book (Applebaum 2017: xxx; emphasis added)
It was truly a timely publication in the year 2017, with a divided Ukraine still locked in something akin to civil war, Ukrainian acts of aggression towards Soviet monuments and the release of Bitter Harvest (2017), a Canadian–US-American film directed by George Mendeluk, which tells the tale of the Holodomor to a global audience
Summary
Written by Anne Applebaum, Red Famine is a detailed historical account of the famine of 1932–1933 which engulfed ‘Soviet Ukraine’ (Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, 1919 [1922]–1936; Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic [UkrSSR], 1936–1991)—an event known as the ‘Holodomor’.2 The Holodomor is considered to be the second great famine since the inception of the ‘Soviet Union’ (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR], 1922–1991) and it cost millions of lives, with numbers ranging from 3 to 10 million.3 In comparison, the first great famine in ‘Soviet Russia’ (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic [SFSR], 1917 [1922]–1991) claimed approximately 5 million lives in 1921–1922. As exemplified by the above quotation, it seems that Applebaum’s narrative of the Ukraine–Russia conflict is synchronized with the Western mainstream media version of the event.6 While Applebaum presents Red Famine as an objective historical work, one should keep in mind her other role in the news media and think tanks where she often warns about ‘total war’ with Russia.
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