Examining Extreme Ideologies in History: Lessons from the Holodomor and the Holocaust

Olga Andriewsky is Professor Emeritus, Trent University.  She received her PhD from Harvard University and taught for more than three decades in the Department of History at Trent University. Olga developed and taught courses on Famine in Modern History, the Soviet Experiment, Terror in History, and the Soviet Union and WWII. Her own research focuses on late Imperial and early Soviet history, with a particular interest in Ukraine. She has authored numerous publications, including several articles on the Holodomor. Most recently, she has been involved in the project to develop an online course on the Holodomor under the auspices of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium at the University of Alberta.

Anna Shternshis is the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair in Jewish Studies and director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. She received her doctoral degree (DPhil) from Oxford University in 2001. Anna is the author of critically acclaimed monographs including Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923 - 1939 (Indiana UP, 2006); When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life under Stalin (Oxford UP, 2017); and most recently co-author (together with Oleg Budnitsky, David Engel, and Gennady Estraikh) of Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: War, Conquest, and Catastrophe, 1939–1945 (New York UP, 2022). Her latest book, Jews in the Soviet Union: Post-War Life, Hopes, and Fears, 1945-1953, is in preparation with New York University Press. She is the author of more than 30 articles on the Soviet Jews during World War II, Russian Jewish culture, post-Soviet Jewish diaspora, and Yiddish culture of the Holocaust. Together with artist Psoy Korolenko, Anna created and directed the Grammy-nominated Yiddish Glory project, an initiative that brought back to life forgotten Yiddish music written during the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. A recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship and President’s Impact Award at the University of Toronto, she is currently finishing her book tentatively entitled Last Yiddish Heroes: A Lost and Found Archive of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union about Yiddish music created in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.