'In Order to Expand the World's Knowledge': Investigative Ukrainian Famine Commissions and Transitional Justice during the Late Cold War

• In Event: Accountability and Justice for Atrocities in Ukraine: Lessons from the Past and Present

Abstract

In the late 1980s, two investigative commissions, the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine and the International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932-1933 Famine in Ukraine, were established to investigate the causes and consequences of the 1932-33 famine (Holodomor) in Soviet Ukraine. These commissions emerged out of a confluence of Ukrainian diaspora activism, academic knowledge production, and international legal and political interest in the famine as a way to study Russian aggression in the midst of the Cold War. This paper argues that these commissions contributed to the first major form of restorative justice for Holodomor survivors at a time when global transitional justice efforts were underway for a number of groups who were seeking to address the legacies of genocides, human rights abuses, and episodes of mass violence that were perpetrated during the twentieth century.

Author

• John Vsetecka, Nova Southeastern U