Benjamin Gilman: “as a member of Congress it has been one of my greatest privileges to serve as a member of the Commission on the Ukraine…”

“as a member of Congress it has been one of my greatest privileges to serve as a member of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine that the Congress established back in December of 1985. Now that the Cold War has ended we may not always recollect how very expert the former Soviet communist regime was at denying the truth and only now with greater freedom and access to the secrets of that despicable regime in the states of the former Soviet Union are we gaining a complete picture of just how much damage was done to the peoples held captive by that regime and just how brutal it truly was. The work of the Ukrainian Famine Commission had to be conducted without the benefit of such access and such freedom of speech and thought in what was then the Soviet Union. Still through its diligent work the Commission verified the following: That Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and other communist leaders knew people were starving to death in Ukraine as a result of their policies and that the Soviet regime and its leaders did nothing to help the famine's victims, instead using it as a means to better subdue Ukrainian resistance to the communist regime and the rule of Moscow. The resolution before us today simply restates the facts about the Ukrainian famine.”