Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

by Anne Applebaum

For those who remained alive, the physical symptoms were often just the beginning. The psychological changes could be equally dramatic. Some spoke later of a “psychosis of hunger,” though of course such a thing could not be defined or measured.22 “From hunger, people’s psyches were disturbed. Common sense left them, natural instincts faded,” recalled Petro Boichuk.23 Pitirim Sorokin, who experienced starvation in the 1921 famine, remembered that after only a week of food deprivation, “It was very difficult for me to concentrate for any length of time on anything but food. For short periods, by forcing myself, I was able to chase away the ‘thoughts of hunger’ from my consciousness, but they invariably returned and took possession of it.” Eventually, ideas about food “begin to multiply abundantly in the consciousness, and they acquire a diversity and unprecedented vivacity often reaching the stage of hallucinations.” Other kinds of thoughts “fade from the field of consciousness, become very vague and uninteresting.”