The Memory Keeper of Kyiv

The Holodomor (Ukrainian for “death by hunger”) was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine that killed an estimated 3.9 million people. It was the result of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932), which sought to rapidly industrialize the USSR by collectivizing agriculture. This policy violently eliminated private land ownership, forcing millions of peasants onto state-run farms. In Ukraine, this was paired with “dekulakization,” a campaign to eliminate the kulaks, or supposedly wealthy peasants, who resisted collectivization. As Katya’s father notes, however, the definition of a kulak soon expanded to include anyone who opposed Stalin’s regime. 

In the novel, this is seen when activists label Fedir a kulak for speaking out at a meeting and when the Krevchuk family is dispossessed because they have a nicer home. To crush resistance, the Soviet state imposed impossibly high grain quotas on Ukrainian villages. Activist brigades, like the one led by Comrade Ivanov, confiscated all food, including seed grain for future planting, leaving villagers to starve. The government sealed Ukraine’s borders, trapping the population and turning the region into what Litteken herself describes as a “giant death camp” (“SIUE Alumna Litteken Explores 1930’s Russia-Ukraine Conflict in Debut Novel.” Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, 26 July 2022). This brutal context illuminates the terror and desperation that drive the characters’ actions, from burying food to facing armed activists. The Soviet Union and some complicit Western journalists suppressed the truth for decades. Most notably, Walter Duranty of The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize while publishing articles that claimed any report of famine was “an exaggeration or malignant propaganda” (Duranty, Walter. “FAMINE TOLL HEAVY IN SOUTHERN RUSSIA: Death Rate During Last Year Has Trebled—Food Supply Now Held Assured. BREAD PRICE EXPLAINED Increase in Moscow Reported as Part of Move to End the Ration System There. FAMINE TOLL HIGH IN SOUTH RUSSIA.” New York Times, 82, no. 27606, 24 Aug. 1933).