I don’t see it as Stalin wishing to kill all Ukrainians as such, as Hitler wished to kill all Jews, I would look on it, basically, as more like one of those ancient conquerors who laid a country waste, when a country was giving trouble-Genghis Khan or Tamer¬lane would lay waste to an area, burn the villages, kill half of the population without meaning to kill everybody, but to crush them completely.

One doesn’t want to use sociological terms, or one just wants to see a destroying khan coming and destroying the countryside.
Mr. MARCHISHIN: Yes, Dr. Kuropas.
Dr. KUROPAS: Do you see any modern parallels between what is happening today, for example, in Ethiopia, in Afghanistan and what happened in Ukraine in 1932-33?
Dr. CONQUEST: Well, in Ethiopia-in part of Ethiopia we do see relief organiza¬tions on the television, don’t we? And that is what happened in the famine in the Soviet Union, and again, in the Ukraine in particular in 1921, when American aid saved millions of lives, after being allowed in.

That famine was certainly due largely to the Communists seizing the grain, but they did belatedly allow relief organizations in.

I think the famine in Ethiopia was entirely due, or very, very largely due to govern¬ment policies, certainly. And there are areas in which the television cameras have not been allowed to go in the north, where they have a problem, in some extent resem¬bling that in the Ukraine, in Eritrea, and Tigray, a different national composition which is giving trouble. And there, from what one hears, they are taking the grain and not allowing any relief in, as in the Ukraine.

Dr. KUROPAS: Yes, I have one more question. As you travel around the country with your book, what has been the general response of people to your book, number one, and do you see any efforts being made by the media to publicize this tragic event?
Dr. CONQUEST: Well, this is my second day around, I am starting in Washington, but I have been in England, where this book came out a couple of weeks earlier, and it was heavily reviewed in all of the leading papers, with the reviewers completely ap¬preciating the point

I have noticed that all normally educated people I have come across who have seen the film Harvest of Despair a few weeks ago have all been very affected—it has hit home.

The people who didn’t know about the subject, the ordinary educated man who didn’t know, were strongly affected by that And I hope that the book will have a similar effect, its intention certainly is to make it impossible to ignore the facts, to put them all on record in the context, so that the ordinary educated man has it there
Dr. KUROPAS: Thank you.
Mr. MARCHISHIN: Any other questions?
Ambassador DOUGLAS: I yield to the Congressman.
Congressman GILMAN: Dr. Conquest, the purpose, the thrust of the Soviets was to collectivize the peasants and apparently they collectivized a goodly number of them, and a large number also left after the repression was lifted to some extent
What is the status of the peasantry today? It seems to me that they have gone back to where they were, when all of this occurred.