FOR THE RECORD: Sen. Campbell's letter to colleagues urging support for resolution on Famine-Genocide (01/25/04)

FOR THE RECORD

Sen. Campbell's letter to colleagues urging support for resolution on Famine-Genocide

The following letter was sent on January 8 by from Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), co-chairman of the Helsinki Commission, to each of his Senate colleagues.

"Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-1933." - Conclusion of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine.

Dear Colleague:

Last year, I introduced S. Res. 202, a resolution commemorating the millions of innocent victims of this Soviet-engineered famine. I urge you to join the bipartisan group of 26 Senate colleagues co-sponsoring this resolution: George V. Voinovich, Mike DeWine, Richard J. Durbin, Frank Lautenberg, George Allen, Norm Coleman, Barbara A. Mikulski, Saxby Chambliss, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Arlen Specter, Russell D. Feingold, Dianne Feinstein, Jon S. Corzine, Paul S. Sarbanes, Rick Santorum, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Carl Levin, Wayne Allard, Charles Schumer, Joseph Lieberman, Mark Dayton, Hillary Clinton, Debbie Stabenow, Mary Landrieu and Edward M. Kennedy. [Editor's note: Since the letter was written, another senator, Susan Collins (R-Maine), has signed on as a co-sponsor.]

Seven decades ago, a Famine in Soviet-dominated Ukraine and bordering ethnically Ukrainian territory resulted in the deaths of millions of Ukrainians. In his seminal book on the Ukraine Famine, "Harvest of Sorrow," renowned British historian Robert Conquest writes, "A quarter of the rural population, men, women and children, lay dead or dying, the rest in various stages of debilitation with no strength to bury their families or neighbors."

In 1988 - a few years prior to the fall of the Soviet empire - the Congressionally created Ukraine Famine Commission following a four-year-long inquiry concluded that "Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-1933." Archival evidence since the Soviet Union disintegrated has only reinforced and documented the genocidal nature of the Famine.

The Ukraine Famine was not the result of drought or some other natural disaster, but of Soviet dictator Stalin's inhumane, coldly calculated policy to suppress the Ukrainian people and destroy their human, cultural and political rights. It was the result of deliberate starvation. Requisition brigades, acting on Stalin's orders to fulfill impossibly high grain quotas, took away the last scraps of food from starving families, including children, often killing those who resisted. Millions of rural Ukrainians slowly starved amid some of the world's most fertile farmland, while stockpiles of grain rotted by the ton. Meanwhile, the Soviet government was exporting grain to the West, rejecting international offers to assist the starving population and preventing starving Ukrainians from leaving the affected areas in search of food. The Stalinist regime - and, for that matter, subsequent Soviet leaders and their apologists in the West - engaged in a massive cover-up of denying the Famine.

Please join me in remembering the innocent victims of this tragedy. It is important that the world not forget this genocidal famine and that we support Ukraine's independence and democratic development as the best assurance that atrocities such as the Famine become truly unthinkable. If you are interested in becoming a co-sponsor of the Ukraine Famine resolution, please have your staff contact Orest Deychakiwsky ([email protected]) at the Helsinki Commission at 5-1901.

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