Execution by Hunger

In 1929, Joseph Stalin ordered the collectivization of all Ukrainian farms in an effort to destroy self-sufficient peasant farmers. In the ensuing years, a brutal Soviet campaign of confiscations, terrorizing, and murder spread throughout Ukrainian villages. What food remained was insufficient to support the population. In the resulting famine as many as seven million Ukrainians starved to death, a tragedy that rivals the holocaust. In 1929, in an effort to destroy self-sufficient peasant farmers, Stalin ordered the collectivization of all Ukrainian farms. In the ensuing years, a brutal Soviet campaign of confiscations, terror and murder spread through the villages. What food remained was insufficient to support the population. In the resulting famine as many as seven million Ukrainians starved to death. This poignant eyewitness account of one of the survivors relates the young Miron Dolot's day-to-day confrontation with despair and death - his helplessness as friends and family were arrested - and his gradual realization of the absolute control the Soviets had over life. It is also the story of personal dignity in the face of horror and humiliation. And while it is an indictment of a chapter in the Soviet past, its sad duty is to remind of man's limitless capacity for brutality to his fellow man.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.