The US Commission on the Ukraine Famine was a commission to study the Holodomor, a 1932–33 man-made famine that killed millions in Ukraine. The Commission's final report to Congress concluded that the man-made famine was an act of genocide against the people of Ukraine carried out by the Soviets.

Conduct

The commission was set up by Senate resolution S2458 (98th Congress) on September 21, 1984. The 99th Congress, on January 3, 1985, passed appropriations to fund the Famine Commission and on April 23, 1986, the Commission held its organizational meeting at the Rayburn House Office Building "to conduct a study of the 1932–33 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. At its final meeting on April 19, 1986, Commissioner Ulana Mazurkevich condemned the actions of Walter Duranty, who knowingly sent out false dispatches about the famine to The New York Times. The Soviets tried to establish a kind of counter-commission in the Ukrainian SSR. The Ukrainian Communist Party's First Secretary Volodymyr Shcherbytsky gave scholars access to official archives in order to support official denial of the famine as a fascist slander. The scholars instead found accounts of government decisions, food confiscation, protest, mass death, and cannibalism, and concluded that the famine had been undeniably real. The Ukrainian Communist Party's Central Committee passed a resolution on 7 February 1990, calling the famine a result of the "criminal course pursued by Stalin and his closest entourage toward the peasantry".

Members and staff

Staff of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine

Duties

Findings

Based on testimony heard and staff research, the Commission on Ukraine Famine makes the following findings: