Open AccessBook Review—Anne Applebaum’s <i>Red Famine</i> (2017)
Author(s) -
Frank Hordijk
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
nordlit
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1503-2086
pISSN - 0809-1668
DOI - 10.7557/13.5021
Subject(s) - famine , theme (computing) , power (physics) , relevance (law) , government (linguistics) , history , economic history , media studies , political science , sociology , law , philosophy , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics , computer science , operating system
The theme setting and particular relevance of artificial or man-made famines seems to come up in intervals, when tensions re-arise between ‘Western’ powers and Russia and seems to be useful for the purposes of ‘demonizing’ ‘Putin’—the current President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin (2000–2008; 2012–)—, ‘the Kremlin’, the Russian government; or simply ‘Russia’ in the eyes of ‘the West’. In recent years, the famine of 1932–1933 has reached new heights as a politicized event to be instrumentalized in a ‘memory war’ on many discursive levels (history, mass media, memorialization, etc.) between key-representatives of the current countries Ukraine and Russia (Hordijk 2018). This should, symptomatically, remind us of the sheer power that media narratives have in shaping public imaginations.
The reviewed book: Anne Elizabeth Applebaum. Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. ISBN-13: 978–0–241–00380–0. London: Allen Lane, September 2017. Hardcover; 512 pages; recommended retail price: £25.00.