Red Harvest: A Graphic Novel of the Terror Famine in Soviet Ukraine

When Ukraine came under Soviet control in the late 1920s, a rapid push for a collectivized economy forced farmers to give their harvests to the government and receive a portion of them back in Soviet-determined rations. A poor harvest in 1932 led to death by starvation of millions of Ukrainians, a tremendous tragedy known as the Holodomor. Cherkas (The Silent Invasion) focuses on one family to tell this multifaceted story. A proud farm family with four children sees their oldest daughter marry a Bolshevik whose Soviet allegiance begins to destroy their community. The father resists government edicts, baptizing his grandchild when religious practice has been outlawed; the daughter leaves her cruel, incompetent husband; the older brother feeds villagers with the measly meat of a wild pigeon; and all suffer tragically for their resistance. Framed as the youngest son’s recollection decades after his escape to a peaceful life in rural Canada, this fictional account based on real circumstances communicates a powerful sense of Ukrainian cultural identity and societal outrage. Cherkas’s closely crosshatched panels linger between editorial observation and pencil sketch, capturing the breathtaking immediacy of long-buried memories—visions that feel shaky, imperfect, and essential to document.