And with that, let me call on Dr. Mace here to give us a staff progress report. I have, incidentally, asked him to keep you advised of the progress, where we are going, and the outline that we have for the ultimate report that we hope to publish.

Dr.MACE: Thank you.

FAMINE PROJECT: A PROGRESS REPORT

The enabling legislation mandates the U.F.C to gather all information obtainable about the Ukraine famine in order to analyze its causes and effects, study the response to it by other nations at the time, and attempt to gain a better understanding of the Soviet system by examining the role of Soviet policies in bringing about the famine.

The most important body of uncollected information about the famine is the memory of those who witnessed it For this reason one full-time staff member, Ms. Sue Ellen Webber, has been directed to collect oral histories on the famine as her principal responsibility. Thanks to her efforts, the number of oral histories in the pos¬session of U.F.C grows daily. Moreover, a collection of 57 oral history tapes was com¬piled by Mr. Leonid Heretz of Harvard University in 1984 as part of a project directed by Dr. James Mace and sponsored by the Ukrainian Professionals and Businessper-sons of New York and New Jersey. A copy of these tapes was purchased by the Uk¬rainian Studies Fund of Harvard University and is on extended loan to U.F.C.

Both the tapes already in the Commission’s possession and those being gathered re¬quire transcription before they may be analyzed. More than twenty transcribers are currently performing this laborious task on a contract basis for U.F.C. Tapes are transcribed into the languages in which the interviews were conducted—Ukrainian, Russian, and English.

In terms of response to the famine outside the U.S.S.R., two sources are particularly important: journalistic coverage and the dispatches of foreign governments, including the U.S. Department of State. Mr. Ivan Hvat of Radio Liberty in Munich is currently researching materials in this category in Central Europe, while Professor Jeremy Rakowsky of Lorain, Ohio, has found over 1,000 pages of relevant documents from the French foreign ministry which have yet to be analyzed. The United States, despite the fact that the U.S.S.R, was recognized only in late 1933, did make inquiries to American missions in Europe, and the existence of the famine was confirmed in reports sent to the U.S. Department of State by the U.S. missions in Riga and Athens.

Ethnic community organizations throughout Europe and the U.S. attempted to bring the famine to public attention and organize relief to the needy in the U.S.S.R. Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna founded an Interconfessional Relief Committee, ad¬ministered by Dr. Ewald Ammende, who was prominent for his involvements in humanitarian and in national minority issues. The Soviet government denied the exist¬ence of any famine, refused all aid offered, and sold large quantities of grain on the Western markets.

Press reports of the famine raise a number of troubling issues, particularly evident in the case of New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty, whose published dispatches sought to discredit the “famine scare”, as he called it, while British records show that he informed the British embassy that the situation in Uk¬raine was disastrous and that he believed as many as ten million persons could have