Famine, Memory, and Politics in the Post-Soviet Space: Contrasting Echoes of Collectivization in Ukraine and Kazakhstan

Abstract

Stalin's collectivization campaigns and the associated famine killed millions in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, yet the two countries commemorate the events quite differently. In Ukraine, the Holodomor (death by hunger) occupies a prominent place in the public sphere and is remembered most frequently as a genocidal policy against the Ukrainian nation. In Kazakhstan, the famine takes up little space in the public arena, and officials remain reluctant to call it a genocide. This article explores these differences using two models explaining variation in the politics of memory: one emphasizing the instrumental calculations of political elites and the other emphasizing the historical and cultural constraints that frame contemporary debates. These two models complement each other rather than compete. The contest over the famine in Ukraine was in part a consequence of eastern and western Ukraine's differing histories, but it intensified when governing politicians deployed the memory of the famine instrumentally in the 2000s. In Kazakhstan, political calculations led the regime to emphasize unity and stability over divisive debates about the past, but historical factors made depoliticizing the famine feasible.