January 20, 2023
Happy Friday, travelers! This week, I’m focusing our time here on what I read this week. The subject matter is heavy, but important. I hope you’ll stick with me.
Wednesday night, by the light of my lamp as rain pelted my window, I finally finished Red Famine. I say finally because it took me almost a year to read it. I checked it out from the library at least four times, renewed it, renewed it once more, then put my foot down and powered through the last half this winter.
I already knew its subject matter was difficult.
I did not know it would be this damning.
If you’re not familiar with this book, it’s a nonfiction work by historian Anne Applebaum. For 350 pages, she tells a story of tragedy. A story of deliberate, man-made famine. The man in question? Joseph Stalin.
Years ago, I sat in the meeting room of the village council in the Ukrainian community where I lived. My hostess and I walked there together through a foot of powdery snow, so sparkly white the sun’s rays ricocheted off the ground and bathed every façade in light. It was almost blinding.
That day’s business in village life was to advance the neighborhood watch program. The community had no police force and an unfortunate problem with robberies. Like those who came before them, they banded together against the threat.
My language skills were adequate for ordering a coffee and following some conversations, but the winding prose of the mayor’s special speech largely evaded me. I caught a couple words, one of them being “Holodomor.” This village is in Kyiv oblast1, one of two oblasts with the highest death tolls from 1932-33. His downcast expression, shoulders rounded, head bowed said it all. We all rose in remembrance.
Applebaum is somewhat of a prophet. Aren’t all historians? To a point, their study of the past informs much of what we witness today and what we can expect of the future. As Richard Breitman wrote in the introduction of The Berlin Mission, “History doesn’t repeat itself. But sometimes, it rhymes.”
Almost 100 years ago, Ukraine held steadfast to the concept of statehood. They believed in their ability to form an independent nation, and for a few years before decades of Soviet rule, they had that. I know I am not the first to imagine what would have happened if the Kremlin hadn’t executed those intellectuals. An entire generation of activists, their thoughts and visions for a free Ukraine. Gone.
The rural peasantry was hatefully targeted by those who wanted to engulf Ukraine into the Soviet Union indefinitely. Unrealistic, harsh collectivization measures meant peasants were required to produce an impossible amount of grain for export. Every single last bit of food they were supposed to keep for themselves was stolen from them by the state. Livestock was also removed from most, but not all, families. If a family managed to keep their cow from the years 1932-33, it was the literal, sole difference between life and death.
Public-facing propaganda insisted there was no famine. No one was starving. But city people saw farmers in the train stations, emaciated, begging for a morsel of bread. Internal documents from Stalin and the wider Kremlin leadership during the 1930s referenced the famine as punishment.
Journalists from around the world, based in Moscow, skirted the issue with placating words and confusing indifference to the topic. Walter Duranty even won the Pulitzer for his reporting that is full of lies. He remains an honoree to this day, with a note from the Pulitzer committee saying something along the lines of “We know he lied long ago, but we’re not going to posthumously remove him since he didn’t lie to us.”
As we saw in 2022, aggression from the Kremlin against a free Ukraine is not long ago. It is now. It has remained, persistent, like a pulse in the air.
The last chapter of Applebaum’s work is fascinating, because she addresses the idea of Ukraine as a nation today. It has been a sovereign, independent country since 1991 when Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence. If Ukraine was no longer part of the Soviet Union, there was no more Soviet Union at all.
This book was published in 2017, almost six years ago today and five years before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February. The language is the same. The playbook is the same. Almost 100 years to the day, this history is still unfolding.
From the beginning, there was a fundamental misunderstanding the Kremlin had, and still has, about Ukraine.
The entire world watched last February, as many powerful nations assumed Ukraine would fall within the first couple of weeks.
But anyone who thought that never stepped foot in this country. Those of us who have and paid attention to what we saw already knew what they could not see.
Ukrainians will never stop fighting, because they know how to survive when everything is stacked against them. They know the value of that rich, black soil they live on. They know it is theirs, and no one else deserves to storm in and claim it. They are resolved to heal from the horrible things that have been inflicted on them by not one, but two occupying dictatorships. They know that, with the odds stacked against them, Ukraine did not die.
They know their nation is worth it.
Next week, I’ll be back with the last reflection from traveling to Cuba. After that, I’m looking forward to visiting Country #27. I’ll share where exactly that is closer to the trip!
I hope your weekend is calm and bright and involves a good book.
Be brave and stay that way,
Sarah
Oblasts are similar to states or regions.