The Holodomor in Global Perspective

Between 1932-1933, millions of people died by forced starvation in Ukraine. The famine, now known as the Holodomor, became one of the most deplorable acts to take place in the history of the Soviet Union and in the longer twentieth century. The Holodomor occupies an important space in both Ukrainian and Soviet history, but less is understood about the famine’s role in global history. Much has been written about the intent of the famine, its genocidal particulars, and the effects of the famine within the borders of Ukraine, but a significantly smaller amount of work has examined how the Holodomor affected, and was affected by, global economics, politics, and international relations during the 1930s. The famine was covered in hundreds of press accounts across the world, debated and discussed by governments and world leaders, and became a crisis that caught the attention of foreign observers on nearly every continent.

This volume addresses, for the first time, the history of the Holodomor in global perspective. The chapters within this volume present perspectives on the famine, from a multidisciplinary approach, that enable us to reckon with the global implications of mass starvation that took place in Ukraine during 1932-1933 and understand them on a scale that transcends the borders of Ukraine and the Soviet Union. This book is the result of the germination of ideas that contributors first presented as unpublished papers at a conference, “The Holodomor in Global Perspective,” that was held at the University of Cambridge in 2022.



With contributions by:

Roser Alvarez-Klee | Ray Gamache | Bohdan Klid | Andriy Kohut | Wiktoria Kudela-Świątek | Daria Mattingly | Sara Nesteruk | Matthew D. Pauly | Henry Prown | Iryna Skubii | Antanas Terleckas | John Vsetecka | Larysa Zasiekina



This book offers the first global history of the Holodomor, bringing together multidisciplinary essays that reveal how Ukraine’s 1932–33 famine shaped and was shaped by international politics, economics, and media, based on research from a 2022 Cambridge conference.