00:00 Anne Apelbaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and expert on Russian and Soviet history, discusses the failure of the white Russians to defeat the Bolsheviks due to their inability to see Ukraine and Poland as allies and their deep-seated assumptions about Ukraine.

04:54 The Ukrainian nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century as a grassroots movement linked to the peasantry and intellectuals, with a focus on language, anti-establishment sentiment, and opposition to both the Russian and Polish empires. In 1917, Ukrainian independence was declared by the central rada, led by historian Mikhailo Hrushevsky, but was soon followed by the Bolshevik invasion and a massive peasant rebellion. The Bolshevik leadership, despite their claims of being with the people, held similar nationalistic and imperial prejudices as their Tsarist predecessors.

09:21 The Bolsheviks opposed Ukrainian independence and sent troops to suppress the rebellion, using harsh tactics such as confiscating food and killing Ukrainian intellectuals, leading to a chaotic peasant rebellion in 1918.

13:55 After the Bolsheviks win militarily, they create the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in an attempt to co-opt Ukrainian nationalism and keep the peace in the region, with Stalin playing a role in witnessing the chaos and giving harsh orders.

18:24 The Ukrainian Soviet Republic initially had some independence and allowed for Ukrainian language, schools, and arts to flourish, but this changed when Stalin decided to collectivize agriculture and view the peasants as a hindrance to industrialization.

22:51 The peasants in Ukraine resist collectivization through various forms of resistance, including women's rebellions, armed resistance, and killing their own livestock, but their efforts are met with extraordinary violence from the Bolsheviks.

27:16 The first famine in the Soviet Union begins as a result of collectivization, leading to massive food shortages and hunger across the country, particularly in Ukraine, where Stalin exacerbates the famine to suppress Ukrainian nationalism.

31:28 The famine in Ukraine was allowed to happen by the Soviet Union in order to repress the peasantry, eliminate Ukrainians, and eventually replace them with people from Russia.

35:32 The famine in Ukraine, known as the holodomor, was a unique and deliberate act of colonialism by the Soviet Union, involving the suppression of Ukrainian culture and identity, and was carried out by both Russian and Ukrainian collaborators.

39:47 The Russian government has never accepted that the famine in Ukraine was a genocide, and very little information about the famine was able to get out to the wider world due to Stalin's suppression of information and censorship of journalists.

44:11 The famine in Ukraine was not only an attempt to wipe out the Ukrainian people, but also to eliminate Ukraine as a nation and suppress the peasantry and cultural leaders.