Congressman GILMAN: How long did that persist?
Dr. CONQUEST: Well, this ended virtually with the end of the famine itself. When they started to distribute some rations in May 1933, after the people had died out—is some villages everybody had died out, of course, and others fewer. It varied from 10 percent in some villages to 100 percent in others.
Congressman GILMAN: What brought about the change in the attitude of the government which allowed food to be distributed into the Ukraine?
Dr. CONQUEST: Well, they were either going to let the whole population starve or not If they were, they would have nobody to bring in the grain the following year. It was designed, as I see it, not to kill everybody, but to crush the Ukrainian peasant beyond any possibility of resistance. And to bring in the next harvest they used, since, in the first place, most of the horses had died, they used cows, they used women, they brought in students, they brought in Russian soldiers and they got a harvest of sorts out from the Ukraine that year. Without somebody there to bring it in, they couldn’t have done anything, they would really have ruined the country totally.
Congressman GILMAN: How long did the government impose the famine, for how long a period of time?
Dr. CONQUEST: The whole time-the worst period starts about October 1932 and goes on until May 1933. The very worst period was around March, April.
Congressman GILMAN: Was there any outside appeal from governments outside the Soviet Union to provide relief, or to try to assist in providing relief?
Dr. CONQUEST: I don’t think there was anything governmental, but important committees were set up in Austria and an international committee of aid was set up. The Ukrainians in Poland set up aid commissions to try and help, and there were other organizations as well—they approached the Soviet government who refused any aid.
Congressman GILMAN: Was there any worldwide publicity at the time of the famine?
Dr. CONQUEST: There was quite a lot of publicity, but there was also—I mean-there was excellent reporting from Malcolm Muggeridge, for example, in the British press. There were several papers in the United States that had full stories, but there were also the other stories, the Stalinist story was being put about by Walter Duranty, and I think that is what partly confused the public in the West, that they had two stories. And if you are an ordinary man, it is not your subject, you don’t know what to make of it Stalin, sticking to the lie he told and having some journalists putting it about, would confuse people in the West
Congressman GILMAN: What was the Stalinist explanation of what occurred?
Dr. CONQUEST: Nothing. There was no famine, it didn’t happen, and it still hasn’t happened They don’t admit it even now. The present head, the recently ap¬pointed head of the propaganda department of the Central Committee in Moscow was ambassador in Canada a few years ago. And he issued a statement on the so-called famine in the Ukraine. These are the new truth-tellers that have been told about
Congressman GILMAN: Did our nation react at all at that time?
Dr. CONQUEST: Not as a nation. There were people, for example, going around lecturing like William Henry Chamberlin, one of your journalists who did see much of the famine. And I have seen the reports in the State Department papers—many