"It seems the Bolsheviks are starving all his people to death": The Ukrainian famine in Les Murray's "Fredy Neptune" (1999)

While Fred Boettcher in Les Murray's "Fredy Neptune" (1999) is in the United States, he finds a fellow strongman, the Ukrainian Bulba Domeyko, overwhelmed by tears, and their friend known as Iowa explains: "He / got another letter. They get smuggled out of his country, Ukraine. // It seems the Bolsheviks are starving all his people to death. / They just drop, in the pasture, anywhere." Earlier in the book, as I re-read it for a course next term, I noted references to the wearing of masks in Australia during the Spanish flu; this reference to the Russian oppression of Ukraine is another moment with uncanny relevance for the world today. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 28 December 2022)