COMMENTARY: Commemorating the Ukrainian Genocide and S. Res. 202

by Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Seventy years ago a genocide of then-unprecedented proportions was carried out by Joseph Stalin's henchmen in Ukraine. Through a man-made Famine in 1932-1933, brought on by forced collectivization and grain seizures, and by accompanying murders and other violent repressive measures, between 5 and 10 million innocent Ukrainians perished.

In a further horrible twist, the world has largely remained ignorant of these events because the Soviet regime engaged in a successful cover-up, aided by a few cooperative foreign correspondents like Walter Duranty of The New York Times, whose 1932 Pulitzer Prize for reporting from the Soviet Union is being retroactively challenged.

Thus, it is particularly timely that a bipartisan resolution solemnly remembering and honoring the millions of victims of the genocidal Ukrainian famine has been co-sponsored by 27 members - more than one-quarter of the U.S. Senate. The resolution forthrightly states: "The man-made Ukraine Famine of 1932-1933 was an act of genocide as defined by the United Nations Genocide Convention." The Bush administration is opposing passage of this resolution.

Inquiries have elicited an explanation that the administration disagrees with the use of the term "genocide" to describe the Stalinist policies in Ukraine. Yet the U.N. Convention, which the United States Senate has ratified, defines genocide as meaning "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part..." The catalogue of Soviet behavior in Ukraine in 1932-1933 included all three of these terrible crimes.

The Senate resolution (S. Res. 202) is not an anti-Russian piece of legislation. It carefully avoids any accusations of collective guilt for the genocide and casts no aspersions on the current Russian government. Nonetheless, the press secretary of the Russian Embassy in Washington publicly declared Moscow's opposition in a September radio interview.

The Bush administration has been restrained in its comments on Russian President Vladimir's Putin's suppression of independent television stations, arrests of business tycoons who dare support opposition parties and violations of human rights in Chechnya.

It would be a tragic dishonoring of millions of victims if a misplaced desire not to offend Moscow were to continue to block passage of the Senate resolution on the genocidal Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 11, 2004, No. 2, Vol. LXXII

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