Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine

　　史達林精心策劃的種族清洗活動–
　　讓百萬烏克蘭人在富饒的故土上飢餓、貧困、死亡

　　《古拉格的歷史》普利茲獎得主–安‧艾普邦姆證實史達林的極惡罪行

　　1929年史達林展開了他的農業集體化政策，迫使上百萬農民離開他們的土地搬移到集合農莊，結果造成歐洲史上最致命的飢荒災難。1931到1933年間至少五百萬蘇聯人民死亡。但是蘇維埃政府並沒有救濟人民，反而利用了這場災難來擺脫政治問題。安‧艾普邦姆認為，死亡超過三百萬的烏克蘭人，他們並不是失敗政策與天災中的意外受害者，而是國家精心策劃下的犧牲者。

　　艾普邦姆證明了長期以來一直被懷疑的事情：為了報復於1918-1920內戰中抵制布爾什維克主義的烏克蘭，史達林於施行集合農業時直接瞄準有「蘇聯麵包籃」之稱的烏克蘭開刀。政府封鎖了烏克蘭的邊界，扣押所有可用的食物、種子，將善於耕作的農民流放到西伯利亞。饑荒迅速擴散，人們開始尋找任何可以吃的東西：草、樹皮、狗、屍體，甚至為了爭奪食物互相殺害。艾普邦姆平實的描繪出普通百姓在極端的邪惡下，為了存活努力掙扎的恐怖景象。

　　今日，如同史達林獨裁的普丁再次孤立烏克蘭時，本書解釋了烏克蘭與俄羅斯無法根絕的衝突。除了探究這場罪行，我們更需思索二十一世紀仍然動盪的國際秩序與種族紛爭。(文/博客來編譯)

　　From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag and the National Book Award finalist Iron Curtain, a revelatory history of one of Stalin's greatest crimes—the consequences of which still resonate today

　　In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization—in effect a second Russian revolution—which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them.

　　Applebaum proves what has long been suspected: after a series of rebellions unsettled the province, Stalin set out to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry. The state sealed the republic’s borders and seized all available food. Starvation set in rapidly, and people ate anything: grass, tree bark, dogs, corpses. In some cases, they killed one another for food. Devastating and definitive, Red Famine captures the horror of ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary evil.

　　Today, Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, has placed Ukrainian independence in its sights once more. Applebaum’s compulsively readable narrative recalls one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century, and shows how it may foreshadow a new threat to the political order in the twenty-first.

Review

　　“A magisterial and heartbreaking history of Stalin’s Ukrainian famine.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, London Evening Standard
 
　　“Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine—powerful, relentless, shocking, compelling—will cement her deserved reputation as the leading historian of Soviet crimes.”—Daniel Finkelstein, The Times (London)

　　“Chilling, dramatic . . . In her detailed, well-rendered narrative, Applebaum provides a ‘crucial backstory’ for understanding current relations between Russia and Ukraine. An authoritative history of national strife from a highly knowledgeable guide.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author

　　ANNE APPLEBAUM is a columnist for The Washington Post, a Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics, and a contributor to The New York Review of Books. Her previous books include Iron Curtain, winner of the Cundill Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award, and Gulag, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and a finalist for three other major prizes. She lives in Poland with her husband, Radek Sikorski, a Polish politician, and their two children.