Ukraine and Global Food Security: Past and Present

The Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine, known in Ukrainian as “death by starvation,” claimed millions of lives, devastated the country’s economy and environment, and left a lasting impact on survivors and their descendants in Ukraine and worldwide. The Soviet state used industrial agriculture as a weapon against Ukraine, its people, cultures, and identities. Soviet censorship, propaganda, and repression made sure the famine was concealed from the world and its memory repressed for decades. Yet, understanding the history of Ukraine and Ukrainian community in Australia is impossible without recognising the impact of the Holodomor and its lasting trauma and legacies.

As one of the world’s leading agricultural producers, Ukraine plays a crucial role in global food security. Today, amid Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, the blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and attacks on its agriculture have turned food production and trade into instruments of war, coercion, and subjugation, with consequences reaching far beyond Ukraine. Recent alarming reports of starvation and evacuations from Oleshky underscore the ongoing use of hunger to erase Ukrainian presence in Russian-occupied territories. As was the case a century ago with Soviet censorship and international disinformation about the food crises in Ukraine, the Russian state apparatus has made sure this unfolding catastrophe has remained mostly absent from global public discourse.

Join us for an expert panel examining the historical continuities in Russia’s weaponisation of agriculture, state-sponsored disinformation, and their enduring consequences for global food security amid the war in Ukraine. This event is part of a series of public events organised across Australia in November by the Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand and the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations to commemorate the Holodomor. The event is hosted by the Vere Gordon Childe Centre and made possible through the generous support from the Ukrainian Studies Foundation in Australia.

Speakers:

·      H.E. Vasyl Myroshnychenko, Ambassador of Ukraine to Australia and New Zealand 

·      Dr Iryna Skubii, the inaugural Mykola Zerov Fellow in Ukrainian Studies, University of Melbourne

·      Prof. Mark Edele, Hansen Professor in History, Co-Director of the Research Initiative on Post-Soviet Space, University of Melbourne

·      Dr Olga Boichak, Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures, University of Sydney