Where others have summarized this marvellous book detailing the genocide perpetrated on Ukraine by Stalin and his henchmen, I will take a sidebar into things as they stand today.

The Soviet Union is no more. Its apologists are no more, we think.

But an equally diabolical regime in China has decided that millions of Muslims within its borders require “reeducation” and this same regime has:

1) Among the most sophisticated systems of electronic surveillance imaginable;

2) Access to personal information unimaginable even a few years ago such that it is poised to leapfrog other industrialized nations in a race to develop machine learning and artificial intelligence.

3) Scientists who are apparently applying gene editing to humans without agreement on the moral limits to applying this technology.

We live on a hungry planet. The race for resources will accelerate as the poorest among us become richer, as our population goes apace, and as we have no consensus to reverse the devastation of pollution or to deal with the hundred or so million climate refugees likely to result.

China may soon have the power to put us out of business. And China is not transparent, or the least bit concerned with the future of its neighbours or, for that matters, with us.

What is to stop China from redirecting the resources of the planet toward its aggrandizement and away from the welfare of the five or so other billion people on the planet.

Its belt and road program is one step in that direction. It may not even need the cadres that Stalin used to terrorize the Soviet Union’s neighbours.

Information and the incompetence of its regime stopped the Soviet clown show in its tracks. But once the machines have been programmed, who will stop them? ( )

En detaljeret og grusom beskrivelse af Stalins overgreb på befolkningen, især bønderne, i Ukraine. Bønderne blev frarøvet alt, selv ned til det mindste korn og stykke tøj. Vold og sult forårsagede mange millioner dødsfald. Et imponerende kildeapparat understøtter materialet. ( )

A fascinating and unsettling book on a period in history that has been much more widely discussed in recent months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: the Holodomor, the famine which ravaged Ukraine in the early 1930s and which killed millions. Anne Applebaum traces its origins back to the 1910s and argues that the famine was the result of a deliberate Soviet policy aimed at resource extraction from Ukraine while suppressing Ukrainian national sentiment and cultural identity as much as possible. She draws extensively on memoirs and contemporary records to show the devastating impact that the famine had on the Ukrainian peasantry, and this is not a book to read if you have a weak stomach. Applebaum’s political sympathies are clearly centre-right, but I found myself broadly in agreement with her that Stalin’s attitude towards Ukrainians—a mix of indifference, malice, and paranoia—coupled with institutional incompetence were the determinative factors behind what happened.

The Holodomor is an important topic in its own right, but even though Red Famine was published about five years ago, its contemporary resonances are painfully obvious, with Putin clearly drawing freely from Stalin’s playbook. ( )

Red Famine has been named by many sources (The Guardian, New York Times), as the #1 book to understand the relationship between Ukraine and Russia. Highly recommended.

I knew about the famine in Ukraine that caused the death of several million people, but I always thought that it was caused by the resistance of the kulaks to the collectivization of farms under Stalin’s regime in the 1930’s.

Applebaum’s book reveals that it was not so simple. In fact, it was a a planned genocide by the Soviet government. Masterminded by Stalin’s suspicious mind, Ukrainian peasant were not forced onto collective farms. Instead, those who resisted collectivization were systematically starved, first through blacklists that deprived them access of modern farm implements, seeds & fertilizer, and then by squads of enforcers who searched their homes and property for any kind of food (or items to cook like grains) and confiscated it. The government then instituted a news blackout on what was happening in an attempt to hide their actions from the world.

At the same time the Soviets attempted to stamp out the Ukrainian language and culture under the guise that Ukraine was part of Russia and not a separate entity unto itself. The echoes of what happened 90 years ago is now playing out again today in the war that Russia began against Ukraine in March 2022.

This is a must read book to understand what is happening in Eastern Europe today. ( )