Summary of Anne Applebaum's Red Famine

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The march in Kyiv on the Sunday morning of 1 April 1917 was the first of its kind. It was the first time the Ukrainian national movement showed itself in such force on Russian soil.
#2 The intellectuals of the Central Rada, who began as self-appointed spokesmen for the national cause, did seek democratic legitimacy. They held an All-Ukrainian National Congress on 19 April 1917, which supported the new Ukrainian government.
#3 The Ukrainian government, led by the third and final Universal, declared independence on 26 January 1918. It was recognized by all of the main European powers, including France, Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, Turkey, and even Soviet Russia.
#4 The first Soviet attempt to conquer Ukraine in January 1918 ended when the German and Austrian armies arrived and declared they intended to enforce the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Instead of saving the liberal legislators of the Central Rada, they threw their support behind Pavlo Skoropadsky, a Ukrainian general.

Sujets

• Europe
• Eastern

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669357704
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Anne Applebaum's Red Famine
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The march in Kyiv on the Sunday morning of 1 April 1917 was the first of its kind. It was the first time the Ukrainian national movement showed itself in such force on Russian soil.

#2

The intellectuals of the Central Rada, who began as self-appointed spokesmen for the national cause, did seek democratic legitimacy. They held an All-Ukrainian National Congress on 19 April 1917, which supported the new Ukrainian government.

#3

The Ukrainian government, led by the third and final Universal, declared independence on 26 January 1918. It was recognized by all of the main European powers, including France, Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, Turkey, and even Soviet Russia.

#4

The first Soviet attempt to conquer Ukraine in January 1918 ended when the German and Austrian armies arrived and declared they intended to enforce the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Instead of saving the liberal legislators of the Central Rada, they threw their support behind Pavlo Skoropadsky, a Ukrainian general.

#5

The national movement in Ukraine was led by Symon Petliura, a social democrat who had a talent for paramilitary organization. He seized Kyiv in December 1918, and power changed hands yet again. The Directory’s rule was short and violent, because Petliura never managed to obtain complete legitimacy.

#6

The Ukrainian national movement was launched with so much energy and hope in 1919, but by the end of the year, the country was in disarray. The Bolsheviks, a radical faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party, had taken over Russia in October 1917.

#7

Even before the revolution, the Bolsheviks had disdain for the idea of a Ukrainian state. They believed that peasants were not a class, and thus could not have class consciousness. They were thus incapable of enforcing their class interest in their own names through a parliament or convention.

#8

The Bolsheviks’ ambiguous stance on nationalism led them to be suspicious of Ukraine’s drive for independence. They believed that national feelings were a temporary phenomenon that would eventually disappear after the state faded away.

#9

The Russian Revolution put the Bolsheviks in charge of international events, and they used this to validate their ideology. The success of the revolution proved that Marx and Lenin were right. But the revolution also forced them to defend their power, and they had to create an army, a political police force, and a propaganda machine.

#10

The first Bolshevik occupation of Kyiv in February 1918 brought with it not only communist ideology but also a clearly Russian agenda. The Bolsheviks destroyed any evidence of Ukrainian rule, and ordered the execution of suspected nationalists.

#11

Lenin’s orders to the Ukrainian front were to send grain, grain, and more grain. Otherwise Petrograd might starve. The rapid loss of Ukraine to the German and Austrian armies in early March infuriated Moscow.

#12

The second Bolshevik occupation of Ukraine began in January 1919. While the Bolsheviks did not control the whole territory of what would become the Ukrainian Republic, they did exercise authority in many towns and cities.

#13

The link between food and power was something that the Bolsheviks understood very well. They used food shortages as a means of control, and they knew that whoever had bread had followers, soldiers, and loyal friends.

#14

During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks took control of all the food in Russia, and began to distribute it to soldiers, factory workers, party members, and others deemed essential by the state. But most people went hungry.

#15

During the Soviet Union, city-country barter remained an enduring part of the economic system. The Bolsheviks, however, blamed the small traders and black marketeers who made their living by physically carrying food from farms into towns.

#16

The Bolsheviks took extreme measures to feed the people of Moscow and Petrograd, and this led to the Red Terror. In the spring of 1918, Lenin ordered anyone not directly involved in the military conflict to bring food back to the capital.

#17

During the second occupation of Ukraine in 1919, the Bolsheviks went as far as they could in implementing their policies. Their hatred of trade, private property, nationalism, and the peasantry was on full display in Ukraine.

#18

The Bolshevikviks moved quickly in Ukraine. They banned Ukrainian newspapers, stopped the use of Ukrainian in schools, and shut down Ukrainian theatres. They also confiscated large estates and used some of the land to create collective farms and other state-owned agricultural enterprises.

#19

The Bolsheviks, with their rigid Marxist training and hierarchical way of thinking, insisted on three categories of peasant: kulaks, or wealthy peasants; seredniaks, or middle peasants; and bedniaks, or poor peasants. They sought to define who would be the victims of their revolution and who would be the beneficiaries.

#20

In Ukraine, the Bolsheviks created a new class of allies in the form of the poor peasants committees, which were made up of the least successful, most opportunistic peasants. They were given power and land taken from their richer neighbours, in exchange for finding and confiscating the grain surpluses of their neighbours.

#21

The Bolsheviks used the poor peasants’ committees to collect grain, which they then gave to the Red Army. The peasants fought back, and the committees were not as popular as they had been in Russia.

#22

Peasants were not the only ones who would instigate class violence. The Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police, also pursued a harsh and rigid campaign in Ukraine against political enemies.

#23

The Bolsheviks were expelled from Kyiv in August 1919, after the largest and most violent peasant uprising in modern European history erupted across the countryside.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Nestor Makhno was a Ukrainian peasant leader who rose to power in the chaos of 1919. He was originally a revolutionary activist from Zaporizhia in southeastern Ukraine, but he became indoctrinated in the ideology of anarchism. He allied himself with the Bolsheviks in 1918, but by 1920 he was calling on Red Army soldiers to desert.

#2

The Ukrainian peasantry was extremely fond of the true Soviet system idea, which was socialism without Bolshevism. The idea was popular well beyond Huliaipole.

#3

The Otaman of Zaporizhia, Hryhoriev, was granted the title of Otaman of Zaporizhia, Oleksandriia, Kherson, and Tavryda by the Directory, a national force led by Petliura. He used the language of the radical left to describe the German and Austrian occupiers.

#4

Ukraine was ruled by multiple armies in 1919. The Red Army, the White Army, and the Directory all fought each other and the people of Ukraine. Lawlessness meant that people were constantly preyed upon.

#5

When the Red Army took over, they would organize a slaughter of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, which could mean anyone who opposed them. They would then empower the poor peasants’ committees.

#6

The poor and middle peasants were able to stand together and win over kulak agents, which infuriated the Bolsheviks. They increased their brutality, and demanded the murder of hundreds of peasants in exchange for one dead communist.

#7

The belief in Jewish treachery was common throughout Russian society, and it was used to explain the defeat of the Russian army in World War I. It was used to justify the riots that occurred after the war, and the massacres that took place between 1918 and 1920.

#8

While the Bolshevik leadership formally opposed pogroms, the Red Army was largely responsible for the violence against the Jews. The worst damage was inflicted by disintegrating military units or bandits with little allegiance to anyone.

#9

The pogroms were a precursor to the collectivization campaign in 1921, when the Bolsheviks took hostages and forced peasants to hand over their grain.

#10

The Ukrainian peasant rebellion devastated the countryside and created divisions that would never heal. It also altered Bolshevik perceptions of Ukraine. The rebellion taught the Bolsheviks to see Ukraine as a source of future military threats.

#11

The Ukrainian rebellion posed a broader threat to the Bolshevik project. The radical, anarchic, anti-Bolshevik rhetoric used during the peasant uprising reflected something real. Millions of Ukrainian peasants wanted a socialist revolution, but not a Bolshevik revolution.
Insights from Chapter 3

#1

The truce with Piłsudski as well as the defeat of Denikin, the Directory and a wide array of rebels, allowed the Bolsheviks to force an uneven peace on Ukraine in the spring of 1920.