When people heard about this, they went around concealing their smirks to show their disbelief that the government was making a show of being worried about the selection of food when there was no food anywhere.
Congressman HERTEL: Thank you very much. Any other comments you’d like to make at this time?
Dr. STROKATA (through interpreter): As you can see, I talk not only of the year 1932/33, because through the entire existence of my generation, the fear existed as to whether tomorrow there would not be another famine.
The country which is the land of my birth is the wealthiest country of all the countries that I have seen in my years of traveling. I have never seen such rich soil, ex¬cept perhaps in Winnipeg in Canada, as there is in Ukraine, and the climate is just as nice as the climate in Washington.
Why this constant fear of hunger then? This question was posed not once by people who became called as the dissidents of Ukraine. To this day, this problem is discussed in certain circles in Ukraine.
Vasyl Stus, who died a few years ago in a concentration camp, is approximately ten years younger than I. But he too wrote about the problems about the famine of ‘32/33, because searching for an answer to the problem of constant malnutrition in Uk¬raine! we all came to one and the same conclusion. This could only have happened be¬cause the government who was in control of Ukraine wanted it to happen.
And it seems to me that one of the proofs, one of the aspects that proves this point, because in the laws of the Soviet Union there are provisions for the curtailment of provisions to certain classes of people. I don’t say this because I’ve read many books about the laws or the system of justice of the Soviet Union, but because I too was once a prisoner, was punished through the means of hunger.
There were days when I was placed on a diet which constituted 1,400 calories, but there were days when I only received food for 900 calories. And regardless of how many calories I received, I was still forced to fulfill a certain norm of work.
If the Soviet system was not ashamed to create a system of justice which encourages punishment through hunger, this uncovers the capability of this regime to continue with promoting famine and other ills. Such were the times of the ’20s, the ’30s, and the ’40s in the Ukraine.
Congressman HERTEL: Thank you.
Chairman Mica is here with us.
I just want to ask one question. You focus on the very important point on the knowledge of other people in the Ukraine today as to the past famine and using food at other periods of time as not only punishment, but as a taking of life. Because it’s such a very strict police state and the punishments are so severe, we know that people pass on that information to their family members, etc.
But what percentage of the current population, one in the Ukraine, two in the rest of the Soviet Union, would you think has heard of the great famine?
Dr. STROKATA (through interpreter): The most difficult questions are always those of statistics for me. A closed society where information does not belong to the people and keeping watch on the Soviet press today, I see more things being written about it, but no true disclosures of the famine.