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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the challenges of studying, writing, and articulating the history of Ukraine’s famines and explores how to incorporate the post- and decolonial theory and environmental optics.

Paper long abstract:

During famines in history, the deterioration of the economic and environmental conditions in rural and urban areas had dramatic consequences on many levels of life, including social, human, and non-human. Ukraine’s Soviet famines of 1921–1923, 1932–1933, and 1946–1947 are usually considered through the lenses of national (Ukrainian) and area (Soviet) studies, political and economic history, and demography. However, to understand their causes and consequences, it is crucially important to include the research on Ukraine’s famines in discussions on decolonization in Ukrainian, Soviet, Slavic, and Eastern European studies more broadly. By analyzing these periods of extreme social and environmental ruptures from the decolonial and postcolonial theory perspectives, this paper aims to challenge the existing theoretical and epistemological traditions and to uncover the long-existing colonial frameworks and economic and food inequalities. Moreover, the research on famines should expand beyond studying its impact on people. Uncovering the implications of famines on the lives of humans, more-than-human species, and the environment, this paper will shed light on the challenges when writing and articulating about other contemporaries of famines, especially when the thinking and studying their histories coellipsed with Russia’s war against Ukraine and enormous challenges and threats of survival to people, animals, and environment. Looking at ways of enriching our understanding of famines as human, more-than-human, and national catastrophes, this paper invites scholars and the wider community to think of famine from ethically inclusive and postcolonial perspectives, making a place for grieving all who became their victims.