Turning the pages back... May 11, 1986 (05/09/04)

Turning the pages back...

May 11, 1986

Eighteen years ago, in our issue dated May 11, 1986, we reported the details of the historic first meeting of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine. Readers learned how the commission was going to go about its mission: to determine the causes and consequences of the Great Famine that ravaged Ukraine in 1932-1933. The inaugural meeting had a nuts-and-bolts agenda: discussion of the scope of the commission's work, approval of the commission's by-laws and budget, and an exchange of ideas among commission members regarding projects and hearings.

(Though the meeting was held on April 23 [as we were already completing the April 27 issue], the complete report on the meeting did not run in the next possible issue, May 4, due to the explosion at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, news of which came to light only on April 28. Our abbreviated report and photo in the May 4 issue did notify our readers that the commission had indeed begun its work, but the bulk of the news appeared a week later, along with the sad news that the moving force behind the commission's establishment, Ihor Olshaniwsky, had passed away on May 8.)

During the inaugural meeting, the six public members of the commission, Bohdan Fedorak, Myron Kuropas, Daniel Marchishin, Ulana Mazurkevich, Anastasia Volker and Oles Weres, were sworn in as U.S. government employees; the other members of the 15-member commission were members of the U.S. Congress and the administration. The commission chair, Rep. Daniel Mica (D-Fla.), opened the meeting. Also participating in the proceedings on that historic day was the commission's staff director, Dr. James E. Mace.

Already at that first meeting the commission discussed employment of contract workers to conduct an oral history project, the pilot of which had been directed by Dr. Mace for the Ukrainian American Professionals and Businesspersons Association of New York and New Jersey. Also discussed was the scheduling of hearings across the United States and the recording (both audio and video) of survivors' accounts of the Great Famine.

Four years and two months later, the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine completed its work. Part of its legacy is its 1988 Report to Congress, which included the landmark finding that the Great Famine was a genocide perpetrated against the people of Ukraine by the Soviet regime, and three volumes of the Oral History Project released in 1990 - all fruits of the labor completed by Dr. Mace and his co-workers on the commission staff.

Source: "U.S. commission on famine holds inaugural meeting," by Roma Hadzewycz, The Ukrainian Weekly, May 11, 1986, Vol. LIV, No. 19.

| Home Page |