TY - JOUR AU - Hordijk, Frank PY - 2019/11/11 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine (2017): Book Review JF - Nordlit JA - Nordlit VL - 0 IS - 42 SE - Reviews DO - 10.7557/13.5021 UR - https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/5021 SP - 381–390 AB - <p>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 <strong>‘Russia’</strong> 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.</p><p><strong>The reviewed book:&nbsp;</strong>Anne Elizabeth Applebaum. <em>Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine</em>. ISBN-13: 978–0–241–00380–0. London: Allen Lane, September 2017. Hardcover; 512 pages; recommended retail price: £25.00.</p> ER -