Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

by Anne Applebaum

The ensuing arguments—within the Moscow leadership, the Ukrainian Communist Party in Kharkiv, and between Moscow and Kharkiv—were murky and guarded, even confusing and contradictory. The potential for widespread famine was by now well understood on all sides. But, again, Stalin’s personal responsibility for the collectivization policy—he had conceived and argued for it, backed and stood by it—was perfectly well understood too. To oppose it openly, let alone imply that it had somehow failed, sounded like a criticism of the leader himself. Everyone knew that the provision of food aid to Ukraine was a tacit admission of Stalin’s failure—yet if the Ukrainian peasants were not spared their grain and encouraged to sow their crops, everyone also knew that catastrophe would follow.