Scope: 1931-1989
Size: 2 c.f.
Language: English, Ukrainian, Russian, French, German
The International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine deposited one complete set of recorded testimonies, submissions, and documentary exhibits used in their investigation at the Ukrainian Research Institute in September 1994. The original records are deposited at the Nobel Institute of Norway (Drammensveien 19, 0255 Oslo-2, Norway). The records of the International Commission of Inquiry contain 1,714 pages of testimonies of famine eyewitnesses and prominent international experts of Stalin's terror policy, and an additional 7, 274 pages of documentary evidence including diplomatic reports, publications, and Soviet decrees. In the Commission's final report presented in 1991 to the United Nations in Geneva and to the European Parliamentary Assembly in Strasbourg, members unanimously concluded that a famine did take place in Ukraine from approximately August-September, 1932 to July, 1933. Furthermore, the Commission reached a consensus that as a result of this man-made famine imposed on Ukrainian people by the Soviet regime, at least 4.5 million people died in Ukraine while another three more million perished outside Ukraine.
HISTORY
The Commission was created due to the initiative of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, members of which approached a number of internationally respected jurists and legal scholars, asking them to participate in an inquiry into the famine said to have taken place in Ukraine in 1932-33. The Commission was created on February 14, 1988, and included seven prominent international jurists from the United Kingdom, Canada, France, the United States, Sweden, Belgium, and Argentina. The Commission of Inquiry, an entirely independent, non-governmental body, was to inquire and report upon: the existence and extent of the famine; the cause or causes of such famine; the effect it had on Ukraine and its people; and the recommendations as to responsibility for the famine.