The appropriately ominous term for the subject of Anne Applebaum’s new book Red Famine is “holodomor”. It’s “a term derived from the Ukrainian words for hunger – holod – and extermination – mor,” and it’s also a description of the horrifying events that took place in Ukraine between 1932 and 1933, when state-mandated famine stalked every city and town in the country and the state’s agents were often spurred by their own hunger. “At the height of the crisis,” Applebaum writes, “organized teams of policemen and party activists, motivated by hunger, fear, and a decade of hateful and conspiratorial rhetoric, entered peasant households and took everything edible: potatoes, beets, squash, beans, peas, anything in the oven and anything in the cupboard, farm animals and pets.”
Christian Science Monitor: ‘Red Famine’ chronicles the ruin wrought upon Ukraine by Stalin
Spikelets lay along with lit candles near Holodomor memorial on Nov. 26, 2016.
