David Satter's latest book is It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past.One of his five best books on life in the Soviet police state, as told to the Wall Street Journal:
Execution by Hunger: The Hidden HolocaustRead about another book on the list.
by Miron Dolot (1985)
Almost no eyewitness accounts have been left behind about the deliberate starvation of seven million people, roughly half of them Ukrainians, in the famine that followed the collectivization of Soviet agriculture. The outstanding exception is this work by the émigré Miron Dolot, a teenager during the famine, who describes in riveting prose the fate of his village in the Cherkasy region of Ukraine. To carry out collectivization, the Soviet leadershiparrested village leaders and warned farmers that if they did not obey, they would be eliminated as "enemies of the people." Despite the chaos introduced into agricultural life, the quotas for grain deliveries to the state were not decreased. The farmers tried to hide food, but officials went from house to house. Roadblocks were set up, and farmers were imprisoned in their villages. They slowly died there, some convinced that their deaths were a well-deserved punishment from God for supporting the communist revolution. In March 1933, the famine reached its climax. Doors were bolted against cannibals. The frozen bodies of villagers were everywhere. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union exported 1.5 million tons of grain, enough to feed all those who perished.
Learn more about It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway at the Yale University Press website.
The Page 99 Test: It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway.
--Marshal Zeringue
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