As the 85th anniversary year of the Holodomor – the Great Famine that killed millions in our ancestral homeland – comes to a close, it is worth taking a few minutes to assess what has been done to spread awareness of this genocide.
Just this week we heard the good news that the House of Representatives on December 11 passed a resolution (H. Res. 931) “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the 85th anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933, known as the Holodomor, should serve as a reminder of repressive Soviet policies against the people of Ukraine.” The resolution had been introduced back on June 8 by Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.). It had 20 original co-sponsors and a total of 33 co-sponsors by the time of its passage.
The House resolution is identical to the one unanimously approved on October 3 by the Senate (S. Res. 435). That resolution also “recognizes the 85th anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine,’’ “extends sympathies to the victims, survivors and families of that tragedy” and “encourages dissemination of information regarding the Famine.” Its sponsor was Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who was joined by 12 original co-sponsors when it was introduced on March 14. Ultimately, the resolution had 20 co-sponsors.
What is most significant is that both the Senate and House resolutions recognize “the findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine as submitted to Congress on April 22, 1988, including that ‘Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932–1933.’”
The administration of President Donald Trump also marked the Holodomor. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert released a statement on November 23 which, while noting that “millions of innocent Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death by the regime of Joseph Stalin,” did not recognize it as a genocide. According to the statement, “This catastrophic man-made famine was one of the most atrocious acts of the 20th century and a brutal reminder of the crimes of communism.” (To be fair, we must point out that no U.S. administration has called the Holodomor a genocide.) In addition, in a message on the National Day for Victims of Communism (November 7), President Trump cited “Ukrainians deliberately starved in the Holodomor.”
In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the Soviet regime had “used starvation as a weapon” and stated: “The Holodomor was a deliberate attempt – part of a systematic genocide – to crush the spirit and identity of the Ukrainian people. It failed. Ukrainians endured and, after decades of Soviet rule, Ukraine won its independence in 1991.” Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was even more direct: “This was a deliberate genocide, designed to break the will of the Ukrainian nation. What’s worse, it was denied by its perpetrators in Moscow, Russia.”
Meanwhile, on the state level, according to Ukraine’s Embassy in the U.S., 22 states have recognized the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian nation. Rhode Island became the latest to do so with a gubernatorial proclamation dated November 26. Such recognition is due to the work of numerous Ukrainian activists who not only organized events to solemnly commemorate the Holodomor (many of them reported in this newspaper), but took it upon themselves to share knowledge about this genocide among their fellow Americans. Such efforts deserve our commendation as we continue to seek worldwide recognition of the Holodomor.