Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust [Paperback]

Miron Dolot (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 1987

Seven million people in the "breadbasket of Europe" were deliberately starved to death at Stalin's command. This story has been suppressed for half a century. Now, a survivor speaks.

In 1929, in an effort to destroy the well-to-do peasant farmers, Joseph Stalin ordered the collectivization of all Ukrainian farms. In the ensuing years, a brutal Soviet campaign of confiscations, terrorizing, and murder spread throughout Ukrainian villages. What food remained after the seizures was insufficient to support the population. In the resulting famine as many as seven million Ukrainians starved to death.

This poignant eyewitness account of the Ukrainian famine by 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 abused—and his gradual realization, as he matured, of the absolute control the Soviets had over his life and the lives of his people. But it is also the story of personal dignity in the face of horror and humiliation. And it is an indictment of a chapter in the Soviet past that is still not acknowledged by Russian leaders.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Miron Dolot is a teacher of Slavic languages and lives in California. As a teenager he lived through the famine forced upon the Ukranian people by Joseph Stalin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (June 17, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393304167
• ISBN-13: 978-0393304169
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #166,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #21 in Books > History > Europe > Ukraine

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heart-rending, July 6, 2004

By 

Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust (Paperback)

In 1929, Joseph Stalin ordered the collectivization of all Ukrainian farms. During the resulting upheaval, some seven million Ukrainians died of starvation. But, while it ended with mass starvation, the Soviet program of oppression started with property confiscation, arbitrary arrests, judicial and extrajudicial murder, and a whole constellation of unspeakable mistreatment.

One of the survivors of this holocaust was a young Ukrainian boy, who survived the conflagration and World War II, and succeeded in escaping to the United States. Written under the pseudonym of Miron Dolot, this heart-rending book tells the story of what he saw throughout the holocaust, and what he felt and thought.

I originally picked up this book because my own family, who were Russian Mennonites, left Ukraine before this time, but all of the relatives that stayed were annihilated to the last man, woman and child. Even so, I dare anyone to read this book and not be moved. The author does an excellent job of bringing the heartless insanity of this holocaust home to right where you live.

So, if you are interested in Russian or Ukrainian history, then I highly recommend this moving book to you.

63 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Other Twentieth Century Holocust!, January 26, 2000

By 

nadia cervantes (los altos, california) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust (Paperback)

Author Miron Dolot has my gratitude for writing a book about his unbelievable experiences in the Ukrain during the great famine of the early 1930's. My own father also lived through this famine, escaped to Germany and finally made his home in the United Staves. While my father retold some of his experiences, they were usually too painful for him to discuss. This book, therefore, provided me with the missing pieces of my family's history. Also, it acknowledged to the world that there was more than one holocaust during the twentieth century. Dolot's well written book, while autobiographical,was objective and amazing in its detail. Finally, this book was a lesson in good and evil. The Communists were relentless in their goal to destroy, humiliate and torture the Ukrainian farmers. In spite of this, the ordinately farm family found it in their hearts to help their fellow man whenever their physical strength and meager resources allowed them to do so.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Murderous ideology, September 16, 2003

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust (Paperback)

This book is a first-hand account of the forced collectivization of a Ukrainian village in the 1930s in the USSR.
It was a real nightmare for all the victims (alive or death), but also for the reader. One gets cold in the back when one sees what an ideology in a by one party controlled State can do and did with mostly innocent citizens.
All free peasants were considered as kulaks. Their farms were confiscated and they became 'State slaves' controlled by an omnipotent totalitarian bureaucracy. Millions of human beings (they were not human for the CP, only enemies) were starved or frozen to death.
One thinks of Jheronimus Bosch when one read certain passages in this book, but they portrait a nightmarish reality: "... a heap of frozen human corpses like some discarded woodpile ... Their frozen arms and legs were sticking out from under the snow like tree limbs in an intricate configuration." (p. 187)
This book contains even harder scenes.

The author stresses also another aspect of this genocide (or was it the principal one): nationalism.
The Party members, who imposed the murderous collectivization, were Russians. Miron Dolot sees the organized famine as a deliberate attempt to annihilate the Ukrainians as a people.

Apart from its uncontested historical value, this book should be read as a warning against the madness of pure ideologists, who, once in absolute power, implement their insane policies, accepting at the same time millions of human casualties without the slightest form of remorse.

For a more general evaluation of the organized famines in the 1930s in the USSR, see Robert Conquest's 'Harvest of Sorrow'.