U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine
Encyclopedia
The US Commission on the Ukraine Famine was a commission set up on December 13, 1985, “to conduct a study of the 1932-1933 Ukrainian Famine in order to expand the world’s knowledge of the famine and provide the American public with a better understanding of the Soviet system by revealing the Soviet role”. Its findings were delivered to the US Congress on April 22, 1988.
The Soviets tried to establish a kind of counter-Commission at Ukrainian SSR.

Members and Staff

  • Daniel A. Mica
    Daniel A. Mica
    Daniel Andrew Mica is an American politician and businessman. He was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing from Florida's 11th district from 1979 to 1989, and was the president and chief executive officer of the Credit Union National Association from 1996...

    , M.C (D-FL), Chairman
  • Gary L. Bauer
    Gary Bauer
    Gary Lee Bauer is an American politician notable for his ties to several evangelical Christian groups and campaigns.-Biography:...

    , Assistant to the President for Policy Development
  • William Broomfield
    William Broomfield
    William S. Broomfield, or Bill Broomfield, is a retired politician from the U.S. state of Michigan.-Early life:Broomfield was born in Royal Oak, Michigan. He graduated from high school in 1940 and attended Michigan State College at East Lansing. During the Second World War, he served in the...

    , M.C. (R-MI)
  • Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ)
  • Ambassador H. Eugene Douglas, Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Government, University of Texas, Austin
  • Bohdan Fedorak, Public Member
  • Benjamin Gilman, M.C. (R-NY)
  • Dennis Hertel, M.C. (D-MI)
  • Sen. Robert Kasten
    Bob Kasten
    Robert Walter "Bob" Kasten, Jr. , is a Republican politician from the state of Wisconsin who served as a U.S. Representative from 1975 to 1979 and as a U.S. Senator from 1981 to 1993.- Background :Kasten was born in Milwaukee...

     (R-WI)
  • Surgeon General C. Everett Koop
    C. Everett Koop
    Charles Everett Koop, MD is an American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator. He was a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and served as thirteenth Surgeon General of the United States under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1989.-Early years:Koop was born...

  • Dr. Myron Kuropas, Public Member
  • Daniel Marchisin, Public Member
  • Ulana Mazurkevich, Public Member
  • Anastasia Volker, Public Member
  • Dr. Oleh Weres, Public Member

Staff Of The Commission On The Ukraine Famine

  • Dr. James E. Mace, Staff Director
  • Dr. Olga Samilenko, Staff Assistant
  • Walter Pechenuk, Staff Assistant

Duties

  1. to study the Famine by gathering all available information about the Famine, analyzing its causes and consequences, and studying the reaction of the free world to the Famine;
  2. to provide interim reports to Congress;
  3. to provide information about the Famine to Congress, the executive branch, educational institutions, libraries, the news media, and the general public;
  4. to submit a final report to Congress on or before April 23, 1988; and
  5. to terminate 60 days thereafter.

Findings

Based on testimony heard and staff research, the Commission on the Ukraine
Famine makes the following findings:
  • 1 There is no doubt that large numbers of inhabitants of the Ukrainian SSR and the North Caucasus Territory starved to death in a man-made famine in 1932-1933, caused by the seizure of the 1932 crop by Soviet authorities.
  • 2 The victims of the Ukrainian Famine numbered in the millions.
  • 3 Official Soviet allegations of "kulak sabotage," upon which all "difficulties" were blamed during the Famine, are false.
  • 4 The Famine was not, as is often alleged, related to drought.
  • 5 In 1931-1932, the official Soviet response to a drought-induced grain shortage outside Ukraine was to send aid to the areas affected and to make a series of concessions to the peasantry.
  • 6 In mid-1932, following complaints by officials in the Ukrainian SSR that excessive grain procurements had led to localized outbreaks of famine, Moscow reversed course and took an increasingly hard line toward the peasantry.
  • 7 The inability of Soviet authorities in Ukraine to meet the grain procurements quota forced them to introduce increasingly severe measures to extract the maximum quantity of grain from the peasants.
  • 8 In the Fall of 1932 Stalin used the resulting "procurements crisis" in Ukraine as an excuse to tighten his control in Ukraine and to intensify grain seizures further.
  • 9 The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 was caused by the maximum extraction of agricultural produce from the rural population.
  • 10 Officials in charge of grain seizures also lived in fear of punishment.
  • 11 Stalin knew that people were starving to death in Ukraine by late 1932.
  • 12 In January 1933, Stalin used the "laxity" of the Ukrainian authorities in seizing grain to strengthen further his control over the Communist Party of Ukraine and mandated actions which worsened the situation and maximized the loss of life.
  • 13 Postyshev
    Pavel Postyshev
    Pavel Petrovich Postyshev was a Soviet politician. He is considered to be one of the principal architects of the so-called man-made famine of 1932–33, or Holodomor.Postyshev was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk....

    had a dual mandate from Moscow: to intensify the grain seizures (and therefore the Famine) in Ukraine and to eliminate such modest national self-assertion as Ukrainians had hitherto been allowed by the USSR.
  • 14 While famine also took place during the 1932-1933 agricultural year in the Volga Basin and the North Caucasus Territory as a whole, the invasiveness of Stalin's interventions of both the Fall of 1932 and January 1933 in Ukraine are parallelled only in the ethnically Ukrainian Kuban region of the North Caucasus.
  • 15 Attempts were made to prevent the starving from travelling to areas where food was more available.
  • 16 Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-1933.
  • 17 The American government had ample and timely information about the Famine but failed to take any steps which might have ameliorated the situation. Instead, the Administration extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet government in November 1933, immediately after the Famine.
  • 18 During the Famine certain members of the American press corps cooperated with the Soviet government to deny the existence of the Ukrainian Famine.
  • 19 Recently, scholarship in both the West and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union has made substantial progress in dealing with the Famine. Although official Soviet historians and spokesmen have never given a fully accurate or adequate account, significant progress has been made in recent months.
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