Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

by Anne Applebaum

The Bolshevik coup d’état in October 1917 unseated the Provisional Government and brought Stalin his first, glorious taste of real political power.41 As the People’s Commissar for Nationalities, he was a member of the first Bolshevik government. In that role he was directly responsible for negotiating with all the non-Russian nations and peoples who had belonged to the Russian empire—and, more importantly, for convincing, or forcing, them to submit to Soviet rule. In his dealings with Ukraine he had two clear and immediate priorities, both dictated by the extremity of the situation. The first was to undermine the national movement, clearly the Bolsheviks’ most important rival in Ukraine. The second was to get hold of Ukrainian grain. He embarked on both of those tasks only days after the Bolsheviks took power.