The U.S. Senate has passed, by unanimous consent, S. Res. 435 – “A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate 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.”
Among other things, the bipartisan resolution “recognizes 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 preamble notes: “Raphael Lemkin, who devoted his life to the development of legal concepts and norms for containing mass atrocities and whose tireless advocacy swayed the United Nations in 1948 to adopt the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, authored an essay in 1953 entitled, ‘Soviet Genocide in [the] Ukraine,’ which highlighted the ‘classic example of Soviet genocide,’ characterizing it ‘not simply a case of mass murder [, but as] a case of genocide, of destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation.’ ”
The resolution was introduced on March 14 by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). It had 12 original co-sponsors, and by the time of its passage had 20 co-sponsors.