Moscow, Europe Publishing House, 2009, pp 184

Yury Shevtsov’s book delves into a complex and dangerous period of history, spanning from 1930’s to our days. From the one side, it deals with a very real widespread famine of the early 1920’s – part of the Stalinist campaign of Dekulakization, which actually amounted to the eradication of peasantry in Soviet Russia. From the other side, the book dispels the myth of Golodomor, allegedly masterminded by the Moscovites with the aim of eliminating the Ukrainians, which was essentially made up by the Nazis. The book describes the famine of the early 1930’s simultaneously analyzing its contemporary ideological interpretations. It can be of interest to students, teachers of history, journalists and all those exploring the contemporary wars, Russophobia, as well as the projects of East-European nationalism and East-West conflicts.  

Moscow, Europe Publishing House, 2008, pp 424

The publication of the book, half a century after its first printing, is significant in two ways. Firstly, after the publication of the two-volume book on the Nuremberg Trials, the subject of Holocaust has been actually suppressed in the Soviet Union, so it is for the first time that the Russian audience is able to get to know the exceedingly meticulous study by Hannah Arendt. Secondly, it may seem distressing yet the subject of crimes against humanity appears to be more relevant in the early 21^st century than ever, be it the extermination war in Sudan’s Darfur, the Serbian genocide and expulsion from Kosovo, or the already third bloody attempt by the Tbilisi authorities to create «Georgia for Georgians». To our deepest regret, the West is insistently trying to «privatize» the subject of crimes against humanity, using the Hague Court as a one-way instrument. It is the meticulous approach of Hannah Arendt, who painstakingly analyzes not only the progress of the Eichmann trial, but also all legal pitfalls on the way towards the known outcome of this trial of the incarnation of banality of absolute evil, that constitutes the fundamental value of this monograph.