I expected a graphic novel to fall short when it came to telling the grim history of Holodomor, a government-orchestrated famine that ravaged Ukraine in the winter and spring of 1932-33. Neither did I think the assassination of prominent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya could be depicted so poignantly in comic book panels.

I was wrong.

Italian graphic novelist Igort (Igor Tuveri) brings a blend of compassion and insight to two heartfelt stories that make up his award-winning graphic novel “The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks: Life and Death Under Soviet Rule,” a visual diary of the artist’s two-year travels in Eastern Europe.

Holodomor has left a deep wound on Ukraine’s psyche. Historians have yet to determine the exact number of victims. Some place the number of dead at 3.3 million. When it comes to historical facts, Igort manages to explain the situation behind the Iron Curtain with elegant yet horrifying brush strokes.

Portraits of Soviet officials and stories of Ukrainian farmers who suffered from selective executions organized by state secret police units calibrate the agony of those who lived under Soviet rule. There’s a powerful passage by Serafima Andreyevna, an 81-year-old Ukrainian, who recalled her family struggling to find food in winter 1932. Igort shows swollen bodies of her fellow villagers and documented reports of cannibalism that make the blood run cold. Andreyevna survived, but she “no longer has a desire to live.”

Yet it only scratches the surface, as most of the stories Igort recorded happened in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, while Holodomor affected most parts of rural Ukraine, including southern and central regions.

Other short stories in “The Ukrainian Notebooks” half of the graphic novel give a sense of how hard life can be to those who made it through horrific post-famine and postwar years. Those people — interviewed by the author — are often frustrated and hopeless. Their marriages fell apart because of the poverty, their children could no longer work because of radiation-caused sickness, and yet they are sometimes nostalgic about Soviet times when they were young and pursued their dreams.

Now for many of them — such as retired Maria Ivanovna, whom Igort met in central Dnipropetrovsk — life is a pale shadow of their memories. “I remember very well life in the Brezhnev era,” she tells the author. “There was good food, and it was cheap. And clothes, which were expensive, could be bought on layaway.” Now she has one only hope — to die. She spends her days outside a big shopping mall; she has a scale in front of her and is asking a few kopeks from anyone who wants to weigh themselves. Nobody stops.

In “The Russian Notebooks,” Igort tries to understand the life of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose assassination in 2006 attracted the world’s attention. Tracing her professional commutes to Chechnya, a small oil-rich province in Russia’s North Caucasus region, Igort explains how her reporting shaped her life, as she turned her field research into a career path. Politkovskaya, whose parents were Ukrainian, made her name covering Chechnya.

The region was marked by a centuries-long armed conflict with Russia. When the Second Chechen War broke out in early 2000 claiming thousands of lives, Politkovskaya was there reporting on the numerous human rights abuses. She was taken hostage and threatened, but she never backed off despite the violence she witnessed.

The death and suffering of hundreds of Chechen families creep in on every page, casting a heartbreaking shadow with the autumnal colors the author uses. Igort devotes dozens of detailed frames documenting the stories of Chechen men who were humiliated by Russian soldiers in early 2000.

This visually rich story takes a sad look at the uneven battle and extraordinary courage of a woman who stood up against the Kremlin as she refused to accept prepackaged truths. Too many questions about Politkovskaya’s life and death remain unanswered, Igort admits.

“Maybe we’d like to share our secret — that secret called war — but those who live in peace have no interest in hearing it,” Politkovskaya wrote in the Novaya Gazeta newspaper in 2001. “The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks” is a hard read, and by the last page you may find yourself beyond your comfort zone. However, it’s an important step toward understanding what life in the Soviet Union and modern Russia tastes like.

As the Kremlin-instigated war against Ukraine began in 2014, the author devoted the book’s postscript to the events in the country’s Donbas region. It’s a showcase of everyday life of militants on both sides of the barricades, a testimony of a changing life in both Ukraine and Russia.

Olena Goncharova is a staff writer for the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s largest English-language newspaper, and is working at the Post-Gazette as an Alfred Friendly Press Fellow (ogoncharova@post-gazette.com).

First Published: June 19, 2016, 4:00 a.m.