Book SummaryRed Famine, by Anne Applebaum

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Red Famine

The suppression of Ukrainian national identity by the Bolsheviks.

During the revolutionary period, the Bolsheviks were decidedly against the idea of Ukraine as a sovereign nation.

Early strategies included the formation of Soviet-influenced republics to undermine the authority of the Ukrainian Central Rada and the use of deceptive terminology to undermine the nationalist movement.

The Bolsheviks viewed the influence and popular backing of the Ukrainian Central Rada as a challenge to their authority. To counter this threat, they sought to undermine its credibility by portraying its leaders as opponents of the workers' welfare. In their formal declarations, they argued that the actions of the Ukrainian government were in the interests of oppressive landowners and the bourgeoisie, whom the nascent workers' state sought to eradicate.

They engaged in secretive operations that eroded support for the Rada. Soviet Republics, self-declared by the Bolsheviks, were established in areas such as Donetsk-Kryvyi Rih, Odessa, Tavriia, and the Don region. The entities were set up by the authorities in Moscow, but they were devoid of genuine autonomy. Agents backed by Moscow sought to destabilize Ukraine's governance through the incitement of chaos and by questioning its legitimacy.

In 1918, Kyiv was invaded and subsequently faced severe suppression of its Ukrainian language and cultural identity by the Bolsheviks.

In January 1918, Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, fell under the control of Bolshevik forces for the initial time. They aimed to conclusively terminate the Ukrainian Revolution by completely disbanding the Rada. Their presence was clearly of Russian origin from the beginning. The leader of the Red Army declared his aim to reestablish Russian influence and authority. He commanded his troops to carry out the conversion of Kyiv into a socialist city. Ukrainian signage and paperwork were obliterated, and cultural centers such as libraries, in addition to museums and public institutions, had been thoroughly plundered.

Ukraine often experienced conflicts with their counterparts in Russia and the central authorities in Moscow.

Within the ranks of the Bolsheviks, dissent was present. A segment of the Ukrainian population did indeed support the Bolshevik cause. Among them was Mykola Skrypnyk, who championed the cause of a separate Ukrainian Communist Party, arguing that communist ideology could find different forms in different nations. Skrypnyk was of the belief that it was possible to create a sovereign entity loyal to Moscow that would also recognize and integrate the feelings of Ukrainian nationalism, thus creating a unique identity known as Ukrainian Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were compelled to acknowledge the substantial impact of Ukrainian national sentiment, which they had previously undervalued.

The concept found little favor among the leaders of the Bolsheviks. They did not recognize Ukraine as a valid sovereign entity. The conduct of the Bolsheviks in Ukraine was characterized by irregularities. They were against the concept of a separate Ukrainian cultural identity or a sovereign political movement within Ukraine. The revolutionaries were convinced that a nationwide revolution required a unified working class communicating in Russian, given its status as the common language. The short period during which they held power in Kyiv allowed them to recognize the mistakes in their original convictions. Their enduring legacy was marked by the deep-seated bitterness, confusion, and hostility that they encountered.

The transition to a wartime economy during War Communism in Ukraine resulted in pronounced divisions, with the rural populations experiencing conflict with the Bolshevik leadership.

The Bolsheviks implemented a rigorous policy in Ukraine that involved the unyielding confiscation of grain from its political and economic spheres.

After securing its control, the Bolshevik party rapidly turned its attention to the confiscation and redistribution of food resources. The survival of their revolutionary regime was well known to the Bolshevik leaders to depend on swiftly and efficiently securing agricultural produce from the farming populations in Ukraine. Lenin emphasized the importance of this task, fervently soliciting food supplies to nourish the starving workers in the capital city, Petrograd, whose backing had been crucial to his ascent to power. Armed detachments, comprising military personnel and adherents of the party, were dispatched by the Bolsheviks to coercively confiscate grain from the countryside, an act known as "prodrazvyorstka."

The effort initiated in 1918 was unsuccessful because the peasants were not inclined to work when they were not compensated financially or granted rights of ownership. The following spring, there was a considerable decrease in Ukraine's arable land. Despite numerous obstacles, the government established by the Bolsheviks remained steadfast in its efforts. Far from easing their approach, they escalated it in both speech and action. During his 1920 trip to Ukraine, Stalin spoke about how the "officers of labor" would lead the country into a new economic period while also enlightening the citizens about its mechanisms. He may have sincerely believed this at that time. Applebaum's research revealed that the leaders of the Bolsheviks harbored considerable doubt in their private discussions. They were aware that capitalizing on Ukraine's agricultural output would be advantageous to them.

The creation of committees consisting of destitute peasants stirred up class conflict and made it easier for grain to be moved unobstructed towards Russia.

Frequent discussions and contemplations deeply rooted in Marxist ideology were common between Lenin and Stalin. They maintained a rigid hierarchical view that enabled the easy classification of all social entities and the systematic division of entire classes into...

Red Famine Summary During the 1920s, under Soviet rule, Ukraine was plagued by a series of peasant uprisings and experienced a profound scarcity of food that led to widespread starvation.

Moscow leveraged the devastating famine between 1921 and 1923 as a means to suppress uprisings by Ukrainian farmers and to weaken Ukraine's national consciousness.

Even with the substantial decrease in production resulting from the civil conflict and the arid conditions of 1921, the Soviet authorities continued their unyielding efforts to gather grain.

Hostilities continued even after the civil war ended in 1921. In 1932, resistance among peasants was persistent in Ukraine and surrounding regions as they opposed the Soviet imposition on their agricultural practices. Following that, the authorities commenced a further series of mandatory grain confiscations. Despite the civil war causing widespread destruction in the countryside, drastically reducing the number of animals, and disrupting key transportation networks such as railroads and roads, as well as the shortage of able-bodied agricultural workers, the Soviet authorities continued to enforce the original grain production quotas on the rural population.

Their insistence on enforcing this policy had a dramatic impact. Applebaum suggests that although the spring and summer of 1921 brought about a severe reduction...

Red Famine Summary During the early 1930s, the mandatory collectivization of agriculture was met with significant resistance from rural communities, which precipitated the catastrophic famine referred to as the Holodomor.

The "scissors crisis" emerged due to the inability of the New Economic Policy to maintain a steady supply of food to the Soviet Union's urban areas.

The government imposed unreasonably lofty quotas for grain collection and subsequently punished the farmers for privately retaining any surplus.

The fundamental disagreements regarding agricultural and economic policies in the Soviet Union, although there was a brief period of calm in the mid-1920s, eventually led to a major crisis. Between 1921 and 1929, the New Economic Policy effectively rejuvenated and improved agricultural output following the ruinous civil conflict, despite being founded on the incorrect assumption that a capitalist market-driven economy could be steered and stimulated by a communist government. The Soviet Union's authorities often manipulated the agricultural sector by enforcing regulatory price limits at different levels.

In the final years of the 1920s, urban areas within the Soviet Union once again faced a deficit of supplies, an issue known as the "scissors crisis," characterized by contemporary charts that illustrated a significant difference between the prices of agricultural goods and...

Red Famine Summary The rise of Stalin's regime and the Soviet Union's intentional actions to suppress and manipulate the release of information about the Holodomor occurred amid a period of political and economic instability.

Collectivization led to a significant decline in agricultural production, which in turn caused pervasive starvation and an intense famine across the Soviet Union.

The government's rigidity worsened the crisis, as it continued to enforce unrealistic agricultural strategies without adapting to the drought and reduced harvests, while also grappling with the consequences of the 1930 peasant revolt.

Applebaum depicts the complete disaster that ensued from the Soviet Union's enforcement of mandatory collective farming. The crisis worsened when efforts to increase cereal output led to the creation of large-scale communal farms, the seizure of property from successful farmers, and the disruption of traditional market activities.

In 1930, authorities announced that the implementation of communal agriculture had exceeded anticipated targets, with doubters conceding its success, although the reality was significantly at odds with these claims. By 1931, a considerable segment of the Soviet Union's countryside inhabitants had been forced into a communal agricultural system, which faced considerable resistance. The most experienced farmers, deeply connected to their soil and...