Congressman MICA: Will the gentlelady suspend a moment? The House has a vote on. I guess the other members have already had to leave. But I would just like to interject this comment I commend the Commission for the work they’re doing and our staff. They’ve done nearly 180,200 oral interviews already and the work that you’ve put in here.

I might just add to the testimony that I’ve heard, I recently had the opportunity to visit Russia and I listened all night-I never changed time from jet lag, but I listened all night, the two nights that I was there, to Radio Moscow in English and the Rus¬sians are still telling the same stories. Nothing has changed.

To listen to the way the news is presented in Moscow, one would think we’re back in the times of the famine, because what they say and what we know to be reality is so for from the truth it’s incredible. I actually taped some of the broadcasts, the news there, of current events, to bring back and I’m going to let some of the school children use them to compare what we know is fact and what they’re telling their population.

If anything, for me, it was timely. This other problem with the Moscow embassy just drove home the facts and the problems that we’re dealing with right here today. To get the truth out, particularly in Russia, is almost impossible. To get it out worldwide, we’re going to have a difficult problem because they have such an effective propaganda machine.

With that, I will turn the chair over to our Commission members and Mr. Mace will assist in any questions that we may have here. And I’ll try to get back. I think we have two votes, so it may be a half hour or more. Thank you.

Ms. MAZURKEVICH: Are there any more questions to Dr. Strokata? I have a question—not a question, but a comment. From what you have been saying through your entire testimony, that hunger is still with the Soviet Union, and particularly Ukraine which was and still is the breadbasket of Europe.

Dr. STROKATA (through interpreter): The life of the average person there is filled with worries about the acquisition of food. It was like this long ago. It still is like this, and it will always be like this. I realize that it would be almost irreligious to compare the problems of food now with the horrors of ’32-’33, but we cannot be oblivious to the fact that our fellow countrymen are plagued by this one question—where to ac¬quire food?

This is one of the methods of creating a society without soul, without spirit. But it’s not only a method, it’s also a method acquired through the system itself, a system which cannot feed its people and doesn’t want to. Ms. MAZURKEVICH: Any more questions? Yes?

Mr. MARCHISHIN: Yes, I have a question. In the testimony that spoke about pe¬riodical problems with hunger and food for the population, I think that we should clarify a situation regarding this general situation, historical recurring situation in the Soviet Union and the famine of 1932/1933.

I’m not sure if Dr. Strokata’s testimony said this, but I understood that these other
problems of hunger were common in other parts of the Soviet Union in 1921 and 1946, etc However, 1932/33, this was a genocidal famine that was isolated to the Uk¬rainian S.S.R. and the adjacent areas of Kuban and the North Caucasus where Uk-