Books, films, series and games you should not miss if you are interested in the history of totalitarianism

Selected by Platform Chief Librarian Prof. Dr. Hannes Hólmstein Gissurarson, Professor of Political Theory from the School of Social Sciences, University of Iceland in Reykjavik. Later supplemented by Teun Janssen, Historian and intern at the Platform of European Memory and Conscience.

A click on the cover will take you to the title offered online.

 Updated December 2020

 

Books

book cover	title
	The Black Book of Communism, by Stéphane Courtois and others. French Scholars, many former Communists, went through newly available archives in Russia and elsewhere and then presented their case: Communism cost around 100 million lives. The definitive account of Communism. ONLINE
	The Gulag Archipelago, I-IV, by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn. A vivid and sometimes horrifying account of the slave labour camps, scattered like islands around the Soviet Union, by a former inmate who received the Nobel Prize in literature for his work. ONLINE
	Animal Farm,by George Orwell. A savage satire of the Russian Revolution where Comrade Napoleon takes over and the hopes of the other animals are dashed. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” A 20th Century classic.
	Nineteen Eighty Four, by George Orwell. The most powerful dystopia (anti-utopia) ever written. Orwell describes a totalitarian society where the faceless rulers do not only seek to control the activities of their subjects, but also their minds. You are required to love Big Brother. His description bears an uncanny resemblance to the reality of 20th Century totalitarian countries.
	Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler. A modern masterpiece: a novel about Stalin’s purges, especially the 1938 Moscow trials of Bukharin and other Old Bolsheviks who confessed to all kinds of heinous crimes. Koestler’s explanation was that they had transferred all moral authority to the Party.
	The God That Failed, by Arthur Koestler and others. Six essays on communism, very well written and thoughtful, by distinguished writers who had either been staunch communists or fellow travellers: Arthur Koestler, Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, André Gide, Louis Fischer and Stephen Spender. ONLINE
	I Chose Freedom, by Victor Kravchenko. The publication of this book was a sensation, Kravchenko having been a Soviet official, making his escape in Washington DC. No less a sensation was a subsequent libel trial in Paris on his book where several witnesses turned up not only for him (ex-prisoners), but also for the defendant, a communist magazine, including his Russian ex-wife.
	Out of the Night, by Jan Valtin (Richard Krebs). The autobiography of a seaman who worked for Comintern and also as a double agent for Gestapo, and escaped to the US. Racy writing on an interesting life. Almost as good a picture of the interwar years as Stefan Zweig’s book is about pre-1914 Europe.
	The Great Terror, by Robert Conquest. A well-written and thoroughly researched description of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. As one Sovietologist said, it is “not only an odyssey of madness, tragedy and sadism, but a work of scholardship and literary craftsmanship”.
	The Harvest of Sorrow, by Robert Conquest. A history of the collectivization of Soviet agriculture, enforced by dispossession and deportation of millions of farmers, and the famine of 1932–33 inflicted by the Soviet state on peasants.
	Gulag: A History, by Anne Applebaum. A fully-documented history of the Soviet concentration camps, from their origins in the Russian Revolution, through their expansion under Stalin, to their collapse in the era of Glasnost.
	Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler, by Margarete Buber-Neumann. The author was the wife of a German communist who moved to Russia in the 1930s. While he was shot in Stalin’s purges, she was imprisoned. When Stalin made the Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler, he handed her and other communists over to the Nazis.
	Baltic Eclipse, by Ants Oras A deeply-felt and moving account of the tragedy of the three Baltic republics that all gained independence in 1918, only to be occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940. Written by an Estonian professor of English literature who managed to escape to the West.
	El Campesino. Life and Death in the Soviet Union, by Valentín Gonzalez (and Julián Gorkín). The author, a general in the Spanish Republican Army, fled after its defeat to the Soviet Union where he was initially warmly received, but then put into a prison camp for being critical and outspoken. By an extraordiary chain of events, he escaped to Iran by walking through most of Central Asia.
	Nightmare of the Innocent, by Otto Larsen. The author was a Norwegian communist who had willingly worked for the Soviets, but found himself arrested in Murmansk after the Second World War, having to spend eight years on false charges in Soviet prison camps. Bertrand Russell wrote: “I am impressed by the unadorned truthfulness of the narrative and by the wealth of illuminating detail.”
	Uncle: Give us Bread, by Arne Strom. An account by a Danish poultry farmer of his stay, as a foreign specialist, in the early 1930s in the Soviet Union where he witnessed the brutality and inefficiency of the Bolshevik regime, leading to a famine in a very fertile land. The book, written in accessible, plain prose, had great impact on Winston Churchill.
	Eleven Years in Soviet Prison Camps, by Elinor Lipper The author was a Swiss communist who had moved to Moscow in 1937, but was arrested as a spy after only a few months and sent to Siberian prison camps. Of special interest is her account of the visit by the easily deceived US Vice President Henry Wallace to her prison camp.
	Hope Against Hope, by Nadezhda Mandelstam The story of Osip Mandelstam, written by his wife. Mandelstam, one of Russia’s most gifted poets, provoked the ire of Stalin and his henchmen by writing a powerful satirical poem about the dictator. He perished in transit to a prison camp in Siberia. The allusion in the title is not only to holy scripture, but also to the author’s name: Nadezhda in Russian is Hope. One critic said that her book was a “masterpiece of prose as well as a model of biographical narrative and social analysis”.
	Witness, by Whittaker Chambers A true story of Soviet spies in the United States, written by a former communist who saw the conflict with communism as the epic struggle of modern times. A very influential book in the US, written with passion and eloquence.
	The New Class. An Analysis of the Communist System, by Milovan Djilas The author was a Yugoslav communist and partisan, close to Tito, but he turned his back on communism when he witnessed the emergence of a communist society where all citizens were equal, but some were more equal than others. As his publishers wrote: “In the end, what this book provides is not only a denunciation of Communism, but stirring proof of the fact that anyone with intellectual honesty and personal integrity must turn away from it.” For writing the book, Djilas was sent to prison.
	Against All Hope. A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag, by Armando Valladares. Slowly, the world is realizing that Casto was no better than other communist dictators. This change in attitudes was not least brought about by Armando Valladares, who was imprisoned in Cuba for over twenty years and only released after heavy pressure on the Cuban government. Valladares survived by praying and writing poetry.
	Eleni, by Nicholas Gage. Nicholas Gage, an investigative New York Times reporter, traced the story of his Greek mother who resisted the forced abduction of her children by the communists during the 1948 Civil War in Greece, and was therefore imprisoned, tortured and executed in cold blood. A film has been made out of the story with John Malkovich as Gage.
	Life and Death in Shanghai, by Cheng Nien A first-hand account of China’s brutal cultural revolution, by an elegant and well-educated Chinese lady, imprisoned by the Red Guards, but steadfastly refusing to confess to any of their absurd charges. Upon her release, she found out that the Red Guards had killed her daughter.
	Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, by Jung Chang The story of three generations of women in 20th Century China, the author’s grandmother, a warlord’s concubine, her mother, a member of the communist elite, and herself, a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution, but later a strong anti-communist.
	Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. An authoritative biography of Mao, full of startling revelations about one of the most cruel communist leaders of modern times. The result of tireless effort and countless interviews with all kind of people, high and low.
	Mao’s Great Famine, by Frank Dikötter. The history of China’s most devastating catastrophe, the famine of 1958–1962, when Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward. Probably around 45 million people were worked, starved, or beaten to death, while the greatest demolition of real estate in the human history also took place. Dikötter, a Professor of History in Hong Kong, had access to regional archives never investigated before.
	The Cultural Revolution, by Frank Dikötter. The history of Mao’s ambitious scheme to eliminate those he considered his enemies, with the result that China descended into chaos. The Wall Street Journal wrote: “For those who have swallowed the poisonous claim that the Communist Party deserves some credit for China’s current patchy prosperity, Mr. Dikötter provides the antidote."
	The Tragedy of Liberation, by Frank Dikötter. A history of the Chinese Revolution 1945–1957, when the communists imposed their violent and brutal rule on Chinese society, stripping ordinary citizens not only of their property but also of their dignity, and sometimes of their lives, in a an orgy of denunciations, accusations and executions.
	Nothing to Envy, by Barbara Demick. Gripping tales of six individuals in North Korea, one of the few remaining communists countries in the world, told by an American journalist based in Beijing. The characters in this true story are followed for fifteen years, in their desperate struggle for survival in one of the world’s most extraordinary societies.
	We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Written in 1921, the Russian author Zamyatin descibes the disappearance of individuality in a society nominally organised for the collective good. Clearly aimed at the Bolshevik revolutionaries and a clear inspiration for Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, it is still relevant.
	I Am David, by Anne Holm. Even if this novel is mainly aimed at teenagers, it can be read and enjoyed by all. David is a 12 year old boy in a communist concentration camp who manages to escape and subsequently undertakes a journey through Europe to the free country of Denmark. Meanwhile, he slowly recovers a belief in the goodness of people. The novel has also been published under the title “North to Freedom”. A film has been made from it.
	We the Living, by Ayn Rand. The story of the courageous and independent Kira Argounova who has the misfortune of growing up in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Torn between two lovers, her family and her dreams of a career, she tries to escape to the West where people can assert their individuality and make choices. Based on Ayn Rand’s own experience of living under communism, it is her most emotionally rich novel. A film was made in the 1940s from the novel and redone in 1986.
	When the Kissing Had to Stop, by Constantine Fitzgibbon. Set in Britain in the 1960s, this novel describes how the communists take over, with the connivance of gullible peaceniks, and slowly strangle liberty, with slave camps as the proper destination for dissenting voices. It is well-written, with an cast of colourful characters. In 1962, ITV produced a television drama based on the story.
	The Fellow-Travellers, by David Caute. An account of the intellectual friends of communism: those who did not publicly join communist parties, but who defended them and the communist regimes directly or indirectly, people such as Heinrich Mann, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and Jean-Paul Sartre. Their gullibility and willingness to go along with everything Moscow announced certainly was astonishing.
	Political Pilgrims, by Paul Hollander. The extraordinary and sometimes tragicomic story of Western intellectuals in search of the good society which they believed they could find in the communist countries. Mercilessly criticizing their own societies, they blithely ignored the oppression and squalor which could clearly be seen in all the communist countries they visited.
	Communism: A History, by Richard Pipes. A concise account of communism from the early days to its worldwide demise, except in marginal states like North Korea and Cuba. Communists attempted a comprehensive reorganisation of society. Pipes, a Harvard Professor, is particularly strong in exploring the links between the theory of Marx and Engels and the practice of Lenin, Stalin and Mao.
	The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia by Richard Overy A superb work, written by the professor of history at King´s College in London, who has published extensively on the history of the Second World War and the Third Reich. An insightful presentation of dictatorships of Stalin and Hitler, the two biggest 20th century totalitarian regimes, that murdered millions of people.
	Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945 by Tony Judt A hugely impressive work, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Arthur Ross Book Award. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both East and West. It defines six decades of European history from 1945 to 2005 – including 40 years of totalitarian repression in the half of Europe that ended up under Soviet control after the Second World War.
	Stalin's Wars. From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953 by Geoffrey Roberts A detailed history of Stalin’s leadership from the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 to his death in 1953, written by a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and professor of history at University College Cork in Ireland, Geoffrey Roberts. The book includes Chronology of Major Events, connected with Soviet foreign policy under Stalin.
	Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder The book by historian Timothy Snyder presents the mass murders, committed by Nazi and Stalinist regimes. As author demonstrates, their combined impact on the people, living between Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, was the greatest man-made demographic catastrophe and human tragedy in European history.
	Iron Curtain. The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum A history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after the Second World War and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. Precise description of how political parties, the church, the media, young people´s organizations and other institutions of civil society on every level were suppressed under communist regimes.
	The Minister and the massacres by Nikolai Tolstoy The Minister and the massacres, written by Nikolai Tolstoy, describes the repatriations of anti-communist Yugoslavs and Cossacks in 1945. The book is a strong criticism of the British repatriation of collaborationist troops to Tito´s Yugoslavia and Soviet Union.
	War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941 – 1945. Occupation and Collaboration by Jozo Tomasevich The impartial study of the complicated history of Yugoslavia during the years of the Second World War. The book traces the rule of the Axis powers in occupied Yugoslavia, along with the role of the other groups that collaborated with them, primarily Croatian nationalist organization known as the Ustashas.
	Memoirs by József Cardinal Mindszenty József Cardinal Mindszenty was the Prince Primate, Archbishop of Esztergom, cardinal, and leader of the Catholic Church in Hungary from 2 October 1945 to 18 December 1973. For five decades "he personified uncompromising opposition to fascism and communism in Hungary". During World War II, he was imprisoned by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party. After the war, he opposed communism and the communist persecution in his country.
	Timisoara. The Real Story Behind the Romanian Revolution by Árpád Szőczi An insightful work about the Romanian revolution in 1989, written by Árpád Szőczi, award-winning Canadian journalist, who interviewed all the main players involved in the campaign to battle communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and visited the Romanian and Hungarian Secret Police Archives.
	Havel: A Life by Michael Zantovsky Václav Havel was one of the most prominent figures of the twentieth century: iconoclast and intellectual, renowned artist turned political dissident, president of a united and then divided nation, and dedicated human rights activist. Written by Michael Zantovsky—Havel’s former press secretary, advisor, and longtime friend.
	Border Crossings: Coming of Age in the Czech Resistance (A Memoir) by Charles Novacek The captivating, tender memoir of Charles Novacek, a Czechoslovakian whose idyllic childhood exploring the Tatra Mountains was shattered by the Nazi occupation of his homeland. He spent his youth defending his neighbors, his family, and his country, first from the Nazi atrocities of World War II and then from the Soviet oppression of the ensuing Cold War.
	The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew, Vasili Mitrokhin The Sword and the Shield is based on one of the most extraordinary intelligence coups of recent times: a secret archive of top-level KGB documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union which the FBI has described, after close examination, as the "most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source." Its presence in the West represents a catastrophic hemorrhage of the KGB's secrets and reveals for the first time the full extent of its worldwide network.Vasili Mitrokhin, a secret dissident who worked in the KGB archive, smuggled out copies of its most highly classified files every day for twelve years. In 1992, a U.S. ally succeeded in exfiltrating the KGB officer and his entire archive out of Moscow. The archive covers the entire period from the Bolshevik Revolution to the 1980s...
	The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the the Third World by Christopher Andrew, Vasili Mitrokhin In 1992, Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist, snuck out of Russia carrying with him a vast cache of transcriptions of top-secret KGB intelligence files. The FBI later described his trove of documents as “the most complete and extensive intelligence ever achieved from any source.” Renowned historian Christopher Andrew had exclusive access to both Mitrokhin and his archive. In 1999, they published the explosive bestseller The Sword and the Shield, which provided a complete account of KGB operations in Europe and America. In The World Was Going Our Way, Andrew now chronicles the KGB's extensive penetration of governments throughout the Third World.
	The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt (1961). Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history, often described as one of the most important non-fiction books ever written. The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognises were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the non-totalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination. In light of renewed extremism, authoritarianism and the crisis of the democracy in recent years, it is once again an extremely contemporary reflection on human nature and the conditions for totalitarian rule.
	On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder (2017). Snyder offers a biting analysis of the current erosion of democracy in the West, particularly the United States, and how long-established processes of radicalisation are not at all long dead. In many ways, it reads like a warning signal, applying the lessons of the past for the political climate (and new potentially nefarious tools, such as digital communication) of the present. ''On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come. Mr. Snyder is a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present.'' A #1 New York Times Bestseller which in many ways reads like a modern incarnation of Arendt's ''The Origins of Totalitarianism''. Snyder's conclusion that ''most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given'' is a powerful reminder that should ring through the fog of acceleration, fragmentation and uncertainty that marks the 21st century.
	The Origins of the Second World War, by A.J.P. Taylor (1961). An implicit criticism on the logic of appeasement policy, not with hindsight bias but through a thorough analysis of primary sources from the foreign ministries and key decision makers of the crises of the late 1930's, Taylor shows decisively that rather than having been the result of a mastermind strategic plan by a singular evil figure supported by a small group of equally evil men; Hitler was an improviser, profited from constant blunders from the allied camp, and did not present a radical break with long-established German strategic goals of European hegemony. More than anything; the book reflects on the fact that Hitler could count on the mass-support of much of the German population for many of his decisions, which when it was released in 1961 (the same year Adolf Eichmann's trial took place), represented a clear break with historiographical thought and was part of a normative and generational shift towards the study of the mass-psychology, rather than singular evil, of the dynamics of totalitarianism as a new generation started to ask critical questions about their parents choices. It remains one of the best-researched, stylistically appealing and generally authoritative books on the outbreak of the Second World War.

 

Academic books on Memory, Politics and Europe

 

 

On Collective Memory, by Maurice Halbwachs (1925).

Published in 1925, it constitutes the original work on collective memory; the study of the social and political relationship between the conditions of the present and the reconstruction of the past, which established him as a major figure in the history of sociology.  Halbwachs’ primary thesis is that human memory can only function within a collective context. Collective memory, Halbwachs asserts, is always selective; various groups of people have different collective memories, which in turn give rise to different modes of behaviour. Memory, in other words, is not organic; but socially constructed. Halbwachs shows, for example, how pilgrims to the Holy Land over the centuries evoked very different images of the events of Jesus’ life; how wealthy old families in France have a memory of the past that diverges sharply from that of the nouveaux riches; and how working class construction of reality differ from those of their middle-class counterparts. This book is the essential underpinning of all later developments in the study of memory and remains a fascinating read.

 

Rethinking France: Les Lieux de mémoire, by Pierre Nora (1999).

The first in a series of 4 books, it illuminates the process of attaching and concentrating meaning into official places of memory in order to propagate certain narratives about the past. Written from a French perspective at the turn of the century, when discussions on national identity, history and culture reached a high point, it has since become the benchmark work for understanding the general dynamics of the selective remembering, and forgetting, of collective memories through precise locations, symbols, or rituals that evoke specific feelings. Building on Halbwachs’ and other scholars study of ”human memory only being able to function within a collective context”, Nora introduces a distinctly conscious social and political dimension to this construction into, quite literally, specific monuments of nations and other communities. If one wants to understand the meaning of locations such as Auschwitz, Katyn or Babi Yar for the memory of totalitarianism and European consciousness; look no further.

 

The Politics of Retribution in Europe, by Tony Judt, Jan Gross and István Deák (2000).

The presentation of Europe’s immediate historical past has quite dramatically changed. Conventional depictions of occupation and collaboration in World War II, of wartime resistance and post-war renewal, provided the familiar backdrop against which the chronicle of post-war Europe has mostly been told. Within these often ritualistic presentations, it was possible to conceal the fact that not only were the majority of people in Hitler’s Europe not resistance fighters, but millions actively co-operated with and many millions more rather easily accommodated to Nazi rule. Moreover, after the war, those who judged former collaborators were sometimes themselves former collaborators. Many people became innocent victims of retribution, while others–among them notorious war criminals–escaped punishment. Nonetheless, the process of retribution was not useless but rather a historically unique effort to purify the continent of the many sins Europeans had committed, all against the backdrop of geopolitical imperatives and the desire for European integration. This book sheds light on the collective amnesia that overtook European governments and peoples regarding their own responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity–an amnesia that has only recently begun to dissipate as a result of often painful searching across the continent, especially in the narrative gaps found between West and East.

 

Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past, by Jan-Werner Müller (2002).

How has memory, collective and individual, influenced European politics in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Cold War? How has the past been used in domestic struggles for power, and how have ‘historical lessons’ been applied in foreign policy? This book is the first to examine the connection between memory and politics directly. The chapters combine theoretical innovation with historical, empirically-grounded case studies of major European countries. This ground-breaking book will be of interest to historians of contemporary Europe, political scientists and sociologists. It flows excellently from the theoretical foundations of Halbwachs and Nora, and was written in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, German re-unification and the overlapping need to understand the diverging pathways in West and East when it came to remembering the past.

 

 

The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility, by Jeffrey K. Olick (2007).

Building on the scholarly tradition of collective memory and its politicisation, Olick introduces a new way to describe what he sees as the new ”normal” relationship with the past in much of the world and Western Europe in particular; Politics of Regret, in which a community derives legitimacy and cohesion through a repentance for, instead of the glorification of, the past. Using examples from post-war Germany and post-apartheid South Africa, Olick sheds light on the complicated relationship between memory, identity, post colonialism  and the dynamics of globalisation in an ever expanding world of ”new” and ”old” collective memories that are to be reconciled with each other, particularly in the context of European integration. It reads in many ways as a prelude to the explosion of ”identity politics” in the 2010’s and attempts to make sense of how nations and groups deal with it.

 

 

The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe, by James Mark (2011).

While the West has repeatedly been sold images of a victorious people’s revolution in 1989, the idea that dictatorship has been truly overcome is foreign to many in the former Communist bloc. In this wide-ranging work, James Mark examines how new democratic societies are still divided by the past. It is a fascinating read that sheds light on the tension between different memory regimes, the historical amnesia of the West towards Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the challenges of democratisation and full integration into the European family. A de-mystifying analysis that also helps to understand the targets of Russian historical misinformation campaigns in these still consolidating countries.

 

 

Twenty Years After Communism: The Politics Of Memory And Commemoration, by Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik (2014).

While the fall of the Berlin Wall is positively commemorated in the West, the intervening years have shown that the former Soviet Bloc has a more complicated view of its legacy. In post-communist Eastern Europe, the way people remember state socialism is closely intertwined with the manner in which they envision historical justice. Twenty Years After Communism is concerned with the explosion of a politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, and it takes a comparative look at the ways that communism and its demise have been commemorated (or not commemorated) by major political actors across the region. The book looks at patterns of extrication from state socialism, patterns of ethnic and class conflict, the strategies of communist successor parties, and the cultural traditions of a given country that influence the way official collective memory is constructed. Twenty Years After Communism develops a new analytical and explanatory framework that helps readers to understand the utility of historical memory as an important and understudied part of democratisation, and its relationship with European integration following the 2004 and 2007 enlargements.

 

The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War, by Laure Neumayer (2018).

The most extensive analysis to date of the cause of the ”anti-communist memory entrepreneurs” emerging after the Cold War, and their quest to integrate the legacy of Communism into the broader European narrative on its shared past, and thus common present and future. Neumayer illustrates in clear language the goals, methods and chronology of these actors in moving the debate on the equation of Communism with Nazism, first at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), then to the European Parliament (EP), and eventually through various transnational memory-institutes and interest groups such as the Reconciliation of European Histories Group at the EP, and the Platform of European Memory and History. She offers critical reflections on the motivation of these actors, and raises questions addressing the ”Europeanness” of their organisations. A must-read for those working in memory-institutes, academia or anyone generally interested in the politicisation of memory.

 

Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization, by Michael Rothberg (2009).

Multidirectional Memory brings together Holocaust studies and postcolonial studies for the first time. Employing a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the book makes a twofold argument about Holocaust memory in a global age by situating it in the unexpected context of decolonisation. On the one hand, it demonstrates how the Holocaust has enabled the articulation of other histories of victimisation at the same time that it has been declared “unique” among human-perpetrated horrors. On the other, it uncovers the more surprising and seldom acknowledged fact that public memory of the Holocaust emerged in part thanks to postwar events that seem at first to have little to do with it. In particular, Multidirectional Memory highlights how ongoing processes of decolonisation and movements for civil rights in the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, the United States, and elsewhere unexpectedly galvanised memory of the Holocaust. Rothberg engages with both well-known and non-canonical intellectuals, writers, and filmmakers, including Hannah Arendt, Aimé Césaire, Charlotte Delbo, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marguerite Duras, Michael Haneke, Jean Rouch, and William Gardner Smith. Rothberg’s book breaks through the discourse on memory as being in competition, or at least mutually exclusive, with an analysis which shows that different memories can be reconciled, mutually reinforcing and even integrated.

 

History, Memory, and Trans-European Identity: Unifying Divisions, by Aline Sierp (2014).

This book questions the presupposition voiced by many historians and political scientists that political experiences in Europe continue to be interpreted in terms of national history, and that a European community of remembrance still does not exist. By tracing the evolution of specific memory cultures in two successor countries of the Fascist/Nazi regime (Italy and Germany) and the impact of structural changes upon them, the book investigates wider democratic processes, particularly concerning the conservation and transmission of values and the definition of identity on different levels. It argues that the creation of a transnational European memory culture does not necessarily imply the erasure of national and local forms of remembrance. It rather means the creation of a further supranational arena where diverging memories can find their expression and can be dealt with in a different way. Through the triangulation of agents of memory construction, constraints and opportunities and actual portrayals of the past, this volume explores the difficulties faced by a multinational entity like the EU in reaching some kind of consensus on such a sensitive subject as history.

 

 

Agency in Transnational Memory Politics, by Aline Sierp (2020).

The dynamics of transnational memory play a central role in modern politics, from post-socialist efforts at transitional justice to the global legacies of colonialism. Yet, the relatively young subfield of transnational memory studies remains underdeveloped and fractured across numerous disciplines, even as nascent, boundary-crossing theories on topics such as multi-vocal, traveling, or entangled remembrance suggest new ways of negotiating difficult political questions. This volume brings together theoretical and practical considerations to provide transnational memory scholars with an interdisciplinary investigation into agency―the “who” and the “how” of cross-border commemoration that motivates activists and fascinates observers.

 

 

 

Memory and the Future of Europe: Rupture and Integration in the Wake of Total War, by Peter J. Verovšek (2020).

Memory and the future of Europe examines the role of collective memory in the origins and development of the European Union. It traces Europe’s political, economic and financial crisis to the loss of the remembrance of the rupture of 1945. As the generations with personal memories of the two world wars pass away, economic welfare has become the EU’s sole raison d’être. If it is to survive its future challenges, the EU will have to create a new historical imaginary that relies not only on the lessons of the past but also builds on Europe’s ability to protect its citizens against the power of global market forces. Framing its argument through the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, this volume will attract readers interested in political and social philosophy, collective memory studies, European studies, international relations and contemporary politics.

 

 

The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity, by Charles S. Maier (1998).

Written a decade after the so called Historikerstreit, or ”battle of the Historians” in Germany on the singularity of the holocaust, Maier shows how this philosophical discussion on historical methodology did not just evolve rapidly into a broader struggle over the normative political identity of the nation; a ”normalised” ethnic nationalism, or a ”constitutional patriotism” based on civic belonging and collective responsibility, but in some ways functioned as a de-facto constitutional debate that enabled the relatively smooth accession of the GDR into the Federal Republic in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin wall. The book reflects more generally on discussions surrounding national community, and how it should be formulated; through legal norms, collective responsibilities, or a kind of romantic, ethnic patriotism.

 

 

Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys, by Jeffrey Herf (1999).

Herf works through more than 60 years of German history with Nazism, and dealing with the memory of Nazism, with a certain intuition that leaves readers with a clear overview of how closely linked modern German political identity is with this heritage. He illustrates how both West and East Germany went through various degrees of generational changes. In West Germany, it evolved from suppression, mystification, and active forgetting, but eventually settling on the vergangenheitsbewältigung or working through the past; collective responsibility and regret, that now lies at the heart of the Federal Republic. In East Germany, a mythicised narrative on the liberation of Europe by Soviet soldiers and universal German resistance to Nazism in order to legitimise the totalitarian regimes that replaced it, lead to the suppression of serious discussions on the past, including mass culpability, for over 40 years. This massive narrative-divergence has a big impact on the task of re-unification of not just economies, political systems or societies, but of shared stories for common belonging. A highly recommendable book for anyone wishing to understand the role of history in modern German politics, and the dynamics of memory-re unification in general, especially between democratic and formerly authoritarian countries.

 

 

The Politics and Memory of Democratic Transition: The Spanish Model, by Diego Muro (2010).

Most accounts on the Spanish transition to democracy of the late 1970s are based on a false dilemma. Its simplest formulation could be: was it the pressure from below, i.e. the organised working classes, students and neighbours associations that triggered political change; or was the elite settlement reached by the regime soft-liners and the moderate sectors of the democratic opposition that established it? This new and innovative volume appraises the movement towards a more democratic Spain from a variety of important perspectives; the collection of essays sheds light on the wide range of crucial processes, institutions and actors involved in the political transformation that operated in the Spanish instance of the Third Wave of democratisation. By making comparisons to other democratic transitions, synthesising the ideas of several leading Spanish History scholars, as well as incorporating new voices involved in creating the directions of research to come, The Politics and Memory of Democratic Transition offers a thorough and vital look at this key period in contemporary Spanish history, taking stock of critical lessons to be gleaned from the Spanish Transition, and pointing the way toward its future as a democratic nation.

 

The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941, by Roger Moorhouse (2014).

In The Devils’ Alliance, acclaimed historian Roger Moorhouse explores the causes and implications of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, an unholy covenant whose creation and dissolution were crucial turning points in World War II. Forged by the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, the nonaggression treaty briefly united the two powers in a brutally efficient collaboration. Together, the Germans and Soviets quickly conquered and divided central and eastern Europe — Poland, the Baltic States, Finland, and Bessarabia — and the human cost was staggering: during the two years of the pact hundreds of thousands of people in central and eastern Europe caught between Hitler and Stalin were expropriated, deported, or killed…

 

Vichy: An Ever-Present Pasts, by Henry Rousso (1999).

An excellent point of departure for anyone wishing to understand the specific difficulties of the French case when it comes to ”overcoming” the past, and how constructed memories tie into the politics of the present. Marked by a collaborationist regime which participated in the mass deportation of jews, and the immediate post-war environment prioritising a rapid national healing over a more fundamental discussion on the past, this ”Vichy Syndrome” has been present in French politics and broader society ever since. Can Vichy be regarded as a separate, and overcome, entity to the legitimate French state? What does it say about France in case it cannot? Rousso does a great job at exposing its dynamics, chronological evolution and what has yet to be done to break through its myths. Slightly dated in terms of the political environment (President Macron has, e.g., been the first French president to publicly apologise for complicity of the French state in the Holocaust in 2019), its analysis of the dividing lines in society and the fundamental questions remains extremely relevant.

 

Fiction books on Totalitarianism

 

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (1932).

Aldous Huxley’s profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetised to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius who who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilisation. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

 

 

It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis (1935).

It Can’t Happen Here is a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, It is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. Written during the Great Depression, when the country was largely oblivious to Hitler’s aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press. Called “a message to thinking Americans” by the Springfield Republican when it was published in 1935, It Can’t Happen Here is a shockingly prescient novel that remains as fresh and contemporary as today’s news, especially in the age of social media, ”alternative facts”, populism and Donald Trump.

Books on Totalitarianism in Ukraine

 

Women and the Holodomor-Genocide: Victims, Survivors, Perpetrators, by Victoria A. Malko (2019).

The effects of the genocides of the twentieth century—the Armenian and the Holocaust—have been well documented, but the Holodomor has become the topic of study only recently. A little known essay, penned by Raphael Lemkin in 1953 and preserved in the New York Public Library until it was published in 2008, provided scholars a tool for analysis of the atrocity that has been hidden from the public and edited from history books for decades. The authors of the articles included in this collection of materials from the symposium, Women and the Holodomor-Genocide, argue that the actions of all strata, victims as well as perpetrators, in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s need to be examined in order to understand why and how the fabric of society was torn apart and unraveled into genocidal violence. Two thirds of eyewitness testimonies have been narrated by women, and their voices and perspectives are key to understanding violence in societies where genocide occurs.

 

Tell Them We Are Starving. The 1933 diaries of Gareth Jones, edited by L. Y. Luciuk (2015).

The book provides high quality facsimiles of the 3 pocket notebooks as well as a transcription of the contents that Welsh journalist Gareth Jones collected during a 3-week stay in the USSR during March 1933, when famine was devastating areas of the USSR, particularly Ukraine, the Kuban region of North Caucasus and the Lower Volga.

 

 

More than a Grain of Truth: The official true story behind the film Mr. Jones, by Margaret Siriol Colley and Nigel Linsan Colley (2020).

In 1935, Gareth Jones, a young Welsh journalist and Foreign Affairs adviser to Lloyd George, died in mysterious circumstances in Inner Mongolia, having been captured and held for ransom by bandits. It was the eve of his 30th birthday. Two years previously he became the first journalist to expose the famine then raging across the Soviet Union. In telling the truth, instead of being feted, he was denigrated by other Moscow correspondents, debarred by the British establishment and blacklisted by the Soviet secret police. In this stunning biography, Margaret Siriol Colley uses her uncle’s letters, articles and diaries to create a picture of a man who was not afraid to speak the truth, whatever the cost. This new and revised edition of More Than a Grain of Truth is a fascinating and personal account of the life of a brave Welsh hero, and a searing social and political history of the early thirties.

 

 

Investigation of the Ukrainian famine 1932–1933: Oral History Project of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine, by James E. Mace and Leonid Heretz (1990).

A collection of documents and materials, prepared as a result of activity of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine and edited by James Mace and Leonid Herets. More than 200 documental testimonies of people, who survived the Holodomor 1932-33, were included to this edition in 3 volumes and 1734 pages long. The report of the Commission was published in 1990 in Washington.

 

 

Holodomor: Silenced Voices of the Starved Children, by Melnyczuk Lesa and Webster Phil. (2019).

Holodomor – Silenced Voices of the Starved Children is a collection of forty stories told out of their first-hand experiences of the Ukrainian terror-famine of 1932–33 by survivors who later migrated to Western Australia. The text is complemented by reproductions of paintings rendered in the style of that era to provide a visual dimension to the harrowing story. This book and Lesa Melnyczuk’s first book on the subject, Silent Memories Traumatic Lives: Ukrainian Migrant Refugees in Western Australia, resulted from her doctoral research, which involved interviewing survivors of the Holodomor.

 

A candle in Remembrance. An oral history of the Ukrainian Genocide of 1932–1933, by Borysenko V. (2010).

A collection of the memories of Ukrainians, who survived the Holodomor 1932-33. A small part of the testimonies recorded during “History Lessons: the Holodomor 1932-1933” programme was included to the book.

 

 

 

 

 

Stalin’s Genocides, by Norman Naimark (2011).

Between the early 1930s and his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin had more than a million of his own citizens executed. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, bloody massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin’s henchmen. Stalin’s Genocides is the chilling story of these crimes. The book puts forward the important argument that brutal mass killings under Stalin in the 1930s were indeed acts of genocide and that the Soviet dictator himself was behind them. Norman Naimark, one of our most respected authorities on the Soviet era, challenges the widely held notion that Stalin’s crimes do not constitute genocide, which the United Nations defines as the premeditated killing of a group of people because of their race, religion, or inherent national qualities. In this gripping book, Naimark explains how Stalin became a pitiless mass killer. He looks at the most consequential and harrowing episodes of Stalin’s systematic destruction of his own populace–the liquidation and repression of the so-called kulaks, the Ukrainian famine, the purge of nationalities, and the Great Terror–and examines them in light of other genocides in history. In addition, Naimark compares Stalin’s crimes with those of the most notorious genocidal killer of them all, Adolf Hitler.

The Ukrainian Holodomor of 1932–1933 as a Crime of Genocide: A Legal Assessment, by Vassylenko V. (2009).

This essay deals with the basic issues related to a legal assessment of the genocidal nature of the Ukrainian Holodomor of 1932–33 in the light of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The main emphasis is to prove the intention of the totalitarian Communist regime to partially destroy the Ukrainian nation by using an artificial famine as an instrument for exterminating its major constituent part, the Ukrainian peasantry. The machinery for carrying out the Holodomor is explained and issues related to the responsibility of its ideologists, organisers, perpetrators and accomplices are raised. The author stresses the need for an of Ukraine in order to elucidate all of its circumstances and detrimental consequences.

 

The Foreign Оffice and the Famine: British Documents оn Ukraine and the Great Famine of 1932‒1933, by Marco Carynnyk, Lubomyr Y. Luciuk and Bohdan S. Kordan (1988).

The Foreign Оffice and the Famine: British Documents оn Ukraine and the Great Famine of 1932‒1933 / Edited bу Marco Carynnyk, Lubomyr Y. Luciuk and Bohdan S. Kordan; With а Foreword bу Мichael R. Marrus. ‒ New York 1988. ‒ 554 p. ‒ (Studies in East European Nationalisms. ‒ №. 2)

 

 

 

 

Holodomor. The Great Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933, by a variety of authors (2009).

Holodomor. The Great Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933 / Editorial committee: J. Bednarek, S. Bohunov, S. Kokin, P. Kulakovsky, M. Majewski, P. Mierecki, Z. Nawrocki, Y. Shapoval, J. Tucholski, V. Tykhomyrov; Selection of documents and academic editing: D. Boyko, W. Chudzik, V. Danylenko, J. Karbarz-Wilińska, S. Kokin, P. Kulakovsky, R. Kuśnierz, S. Lanovenko, M. Majewski, Y. Shapoval; Translation: D. Serowka. The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission of the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation; Ministry of Interior and Administration, Republic of Poland; The Security Service of Ukraine Branch State Archives; Institute of Political and Ethno-National Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. – Warsaw; Kiev, 2009. – 648 s. – (Poland and Ukraine in the 1930’s – 1940’s. Unknown Documents from the Archives of the Secret Services)

 

Genocide-Holodomor 1932–1933: The Losses of the Ukrainian Nation, by a variety of authors (2016).

This collection of articles of the International Scientific-Educational Working Conference “Genocide-Holodomor 1932–1933: The Losses of the Ukrainian Nation” reveals the preconditions and causes of the Genocide-Holodomor of 1932–1933, and the mechanism of its creation and its consequences leading to significant cultural, social, moral, and psychological losses. The key issue of this collection of articles is the problem of the Ukrainian national demographic losses. This publication is intended for historians, researchers, ethnologists, teachers, and all those interested in the catastrophe of the Genocide-Holodomor of 1932–1933.

 

 

Soviet Genocide in Ukraine, by Raphael Lemkin (2011).

This is the first publication in the six official languages of the United Nations and 22 other languages of Raphael Lemkin’s remarkable address on the genocidal destruction of the Ukrainian nation by the Communist regime. The collection is preceded by a Message from President Victor Yushchenko of Ukraine. A historical introduction is provided by Professor Roman Serbyn, while a UN photograph shows Professor Lemkin in the company of key promoters of the UN Convention on Genocide.

 

 

 

 

TV Series on Totalitarianism

 

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Bruce Miller (2018-).

An acclaimed series having won 8 Emmy Awards and 2 Golden Globes for the first season alone. Based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood, this series is set in Gilead, a totalitarian society in what used to be part of the United States. Gilead is ruled by a fundamentalist regime that treats women as property of the state, and is faced with environmental disasters and a plummeting birth rate. In a desperate attempt to repopulate a devastated world, the few remaining fertile women are forced into sexual servitude. One of these women, Offred, is determined to survive the terrifying world she lives in, and find the daughter that was taken from her.

 

Films on Totalitarianism

 

The Death of Stalin, by Armando Iiannucci (2017).

Awarded with a ban on public screening in Russia over what the Ministry of Culture called a ”western plot to destabilise Russia by causing rifts in society”, the film is a ”mockumentary” of the immediate aftermat of Stalin’s deaths, and the power struggles between Georgy Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev and Lavrenti Beria, amongst others. It provides an excellent balance between ridiculing a system that was by itself parodic enough, but does so while also illustrating the general atmosphere prevalent in Russian society during the Stalinist era. In the words of the director: “I’m not saying it’s a documentary. It is a fiction, but it’s a fiction inspired by the truth of what it must have felt like at the time. My aim is for the audience to feel the sort of low-level anxiety that people must have when they just went about their daily lives at the time.” The excellent opening scene, in which a terrified orchestral director decides to fill his theatre with homeless people from the streets in order to provide the appropriate applause for the end of a recording of Stalin’s favourite musical piece, which he demanded be submitted to him after the original performance was already finished, is an excellent example of the atmosphere of paranoia, fear and bureaucratic incompetence that it successfully portrays. Humor is the perfect antidote against dogmatic totalitarianism.

 

The Silence of Others, by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar (2018).

The Silence of Others reveals the epic struggle of victims of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Franco, who continue to seek justice to this day. Filmed over six years, the film follows the survivors as they organize the groundbreaking ‘Argentine Lawsuit’ and fight a state-imposed amnesia of crimes against humanity, and explores a country still divided four decades into democracy. Seven years in the making, The Silence of Others is the second documentary feature by Emmy-winning filmmakers Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar (Made in L.A.). It is being Executive Produced by Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar, and Esther García.

 

 

 

Bitter Harvest, by George Mendeluk (2017).

Based on one of the most overlooked tragedies of the 20th century, Bitter Harvest is a powerful story of love, honour, rebellion and survival as seen through the eyes of two young lovers caught in the ravages of Joseph Stalin’s genocidal policies against Ukraine in the 1930s. As Stalin advances the ambitions of communists in the Kremlin, a young artist named Yuri ( Max Irons ) battles to survive famine, imprisonment and torture to save his childhood sweetheart Natalka ( SamanthaBarks ) from the “Holodomor,” the death by starvation program that ultimately killed millions of Ukrainians. Against this tragic backdrop, Yuri escapes from a Soviet prison and joins the anti Bolshevik resistance movement as he battles to reunite with Natalka and continue the fight for a free Ukraine.

 

 

 

Hunger for Truth, by Andrew Tkach (2017).

In the autumn of 1932, the Canadian reporter Ria Clyman went on a car trip from Moscow through Kharkiv, Donbass, Kuban, where at that time the Holodomor was perverted, to the Caucasus. She wrote what she saw in her articles, which she sent abroad, but her thoughts were never heard, and Ria herself was expelled from the USSR as a “bourgeois disturber of calm”. The documentary archive story of the reporter,film director compiles with the contemporary events: a story of the life of the family of Ukrainian military Sergei Glondar, captured and still held by the Russian Federation during the war at the East of Ukraine. So the modernity repeats the past again. The film was shot at the request of the Canadian-Ukrainian Foundation in cooperation with the Babylon-13 association. The film uses unique three-dimensional digitised photos from the albums of Alexander Wienerberger as well as incredible musical accompaniment – voices of Ukrainian singers Jamala, ONUKA, and music by DakhaBrakha and Dakh Daughters music bands.

 

 

Lady and Bread, by Vyacheslav Bihun (2015).

95-year-old Lydia, from Kherson, who now lives in Tallinn, recalls her difficult youth: she reveals the secrets of her life and describes how she survived the Holodomor of 1932 – 1933.

 

 

 

 

 

Holodomor: The Voices of Survivors, by Ariadna Ochrymovych (2015).

In this documentary you will hear testimonies of Ukrainian Canadians about how they survived the Holodomor – genocide, which was planned and carried out by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1932 – 1933. He decided once and for all crush the national aspirations of the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian elite and destroy the peasantry. He introduced collectivization and sent crews that went from court to court, and confiscated not only the harvest of grain, but all the food to kill Ukrainian people by starving. World closed his eyes to this tragedy. Ukrainian Soviet state exported grain to the West, while millions of Ukrainian men, women and children were dying of starvation. Visual collected testimonies in this film vividly show unexplored period of history, whose consequences continue to respond today.

 

 

Holodomor: the Forgotten Genocide, by Bénédicte Banet (2014).

“Holodomor. The forgotten genocide” – a French documentary about the famine of 1932 – 1933. The basis of the plot, despite the stories of others, is history of the average Ukrainian men, who survived the genocide and now lives in France. He is from the village Sobolivka in Vinnytsya region, and the film shows his return to Ukraine-home. In fact, the film reproduces with the helping of witnesses’ testimonies usual life of the peasants Sobolivka which were affected by the famine.

 

 

 

Genocide Revealed, by Yurij Luhovy (2011).

The film is based on a previously unknown archival documents, memories of Holodomor witnesses, including a frontier with Russia – of Kharkiv and Donetsk region, and on the comments of leading researchers. The focus of the film is aimed at evidence proving genocidal nature of the Holodomor of Ukrainian people.

 

 

 

The Living, by Sergiy Bukovsky (2013).

The tragedy of Holodomor in the film “The Living” woven into the story of world events of 1930 twentieth century: the consequences of the Great Depression in the USA, the rise to power of Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s regime killed by starving Ukrainian peasants… The last fight for their rights, and in 1933 they were not able to have a choice and tortured by hunger. However, the film shows struggle of Stalin with national communism and all forms of independent national policy. A peculiar guide in the film is British journalist Gareth Jones, whose truth about the Ukrainian tragedy was not heard in the West. He is completed with the Holodomor witnesses.

 

 

Harvest of Despair, by Sergiy Bukovsky (2013).

“Harvest of Despair” shows difficult period for the Ukrainian people associated with the advent and consolidation of communist power in Ukraine. Crime against the Ukrainian people became the Holodomor of 1932 – 1933. Ukrainian Genocide carried out an attack on their religious life, the intellectuals and the peasantry, which was the carrier of Ukrainian national idea. The film covers the entire constant pressure and repressions against the Ukrainian people in the stories of witnesses and professional historians.

 

 

 

Mr Jones, by Agnieszka Holland (2019).

Mr Jones (Polish: Obywatel Jones; Ukrainian: Ціна правди) is a 2019 biographical thriller film[8] directed by Agnieszka Holland. It was selected to compete for the Golden Bear at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival.[9] The film loosely tells the story of Gareth Jones, a journalist from Wales, who in 1933 travels to the Soviet Union and uncovers the truth about the Holodomor, the manmade famine in Ukraine in which millions died.

 

 

 

 

I Will Remember Them, by the Holodomor Museum (2020).

On November 22 2019, the Holodomor Museum presented the new movie “I Will Remember Them”, where through the questions of 11-years-old main hero Yurko to his father, the history of the Holodomor and unknown facts about it are told. The main hero is the grandson of Mykhailo Illyenko, the scriptwriter of “Toloka” movie, which covers 14 important fragments of history of Ukraine, including the Holodomor. In the cinema, at pre-premiere screening of the movie, the boy asks a range of questions about the genocide of Ukrainian nation: “Why did people die?”, “Why did the Holodomor happen?”, “What is genocide?”, “Who is guilty?”. He discusses them with his father. The mechanism of the crime are analysed in detail, such as “law on 5 heads of grain”, grain procurement campaign, passport system, “black boards”, ban for going abroad.

 

Millstones, by a variety of authors (2019).

The film tells about the events of 1932 – 1933 in Kharkiv region. The film collected memories of elderly people who experienced hunger as children. The director with film crew visited every district of that region and recorded more than thirty stories. In the “Millstones” there are no subjective value judgments or conclusions, even the word “famine” is not sounded. The authors believe – minded viewers are able to make conclusions on their own.