Has the USA Recognized the Holodomor as Genocide?
By Askold Lozynskyj
I suggest that recognition of a nation’s genocide by a foreign state is a political exercise, having little to do with law or morality. Perhaps the best argument for this is that the State of Israel has never recognized any genocide other than its own, the Holocaust. Why? Frankly no one knows except, perhaps by way of an interpretation by many that somehow recognizing someone else’s grief diminishes one’s own. The Jewish Holocaust was in every respect a genocide as defined by the Convention of the United Nations. The number of victims has never been ascertained scientifically, but the number of victims is acknowledged by the global community as 6 million.
The number of victims does not matter in determining the components of the crime of genocide. Elements of a crime are important but the number only refers to the number of counts and perhaps sentences. In the case of genocide simply thousands would suffice. However, in terms of honoring the victims, the numbers do matter.
The United States of America has recognized certain genocides in history, yet remaining very diplomatic and therefore careful in its assessment. Interestingly enough the legislative branch of the United States has been much more understanding in this regard than the executive branch. One can argue that inasmuch as the legislative branch is described in Article One of the US Constitution while the executive branch was relegated to Article Two by the Founding Fathers, so the opinion expressed by the legislative is more important.
Still recognition and international relations are generally ascribed to the executive branch, so, perhaps, to ascertain whether the United States of America has recognized the Holodomor as genocide, we need to look to both branches.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that the United States in recognizing the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 (the Holodomor) and its executive branch have been at the very least very careful, and some may say duplicitous. Politics is the art of the possible and American politics over the last century has been accommodating or appeasing to bad people to say the least.
America was not a global player until post World War I. President Woodrow Wilson, the alleged father of the League of Nations, struggled with the concept, and could not convince his own country to join ultimately. This was to be the denouement of International Law but it proved to be the harbinger of its futility.
A striking example was when the United States, through its Department of State and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt., after many years, gave recognition on November 16, 1933 to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR at that time was the perpetrator of the greatest genocide that the global community had ever witnessed in the modern era.
Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” and initiated the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, wrote that the destruction of the
Ukrainian nation “is a classic example of the Soviet genocide, the longest and most extensive experiment in Russification, namely the extermination of the Ukrainian nation.”
At the opening of the United States Holocaust Museum, the following words were spoken:
“In the aftermath of World War II, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer who lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust, could find no suitable language to describe the scale and scope of the crime perpetrated against the Jews of Europe. A word that conveyed the depth of the atrocity did not exist – so he created it. In 1944, Lemkin combined the Greek prefix for “race” (génos) with the Latin suffix for “killing” (-cide) to coin the term “genocide,” and with this, launched his quest to create an international legal framework to prevent and punish any future attempt to destroy a group of people because of their national, ethnical, racial, or religious identity. Lemkin’s tireless efforts following the Holocaust led, in 1948, to the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide by the United Nations General Assembly, a turning point in world history. For the first time, nations of the world undertook to prevent and punish the crime of genocide under international law.”
In fact, Lemkin in drafting the language of the UN Convention specifically inserted the words “in times of peace” referring to the Ukrainian Genocide.
On September 13, 1984, on the 50th anniversary of the Holodomor, the United States Senate passed a resolution condemning the systematic disregard for human life and liberties by the Soviet Union, expressing sympathy for the victims of such policies.
A Commission on the Ukraine Famine was set up by Senate Resolution S 2458 (98th Congress) on September 21, 1984. The 99th Congress, on January 3, 1985, passed appropriations to fund the Famine Commission and on April 23, 1986, the Commission held its organizational meeting at the Rayburn House Office Building “to conduct a study of the 1932–33 Ukrainian Famine in order to expand the world’s knowledge of the famine and provide the American public with a better understanding, and to submit a final report to Congress on or before April 23, 1988.” On that day the Commission submitted its report to Congress. Among the findings in the Commission’s report was that “Josef Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-33.”
Subsequent resolutions by either house or concurrently referred to the findings of the Commission mostly by reference and sometimes verbatim including the term “genocide” in the text of the resolution itself.
On October 20, 2003, the House of Representatives adopted resolution #356, referring to “genocide perpetrated in 1932-33 by Stalin and his accomplices against Ukrainians.”
On September 29, 2006, the US Congress passed a joint bill. “The Government of Ukraine is authorized to establish a memorial on federal land in the District of Columbia to honor the victims of the Ukrainian famine genocide of 1932-33.” President George W. Bush signed the bill into law on October 13, 2006.
The monument was established and unveiled in November 2015 through the efforts of the Ukrainian-American diaspora.
On March 14, 2018, the Senate of the United States passed a Resolution marking the 85th anniversary of the Ukraine Famine 1932-33 referring to Raphael Lemkin, the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as well as Lemkin’s essay in 1953 entitled, “Soviet Genocide in (the) Ukraine” which highlighted the “classic example of Soviet genocide,” characterizing it “not simply a case of mass murder, (but as) a case of genocide, of destruction not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation.” The Resolution went on to recognize “the findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine as submitted to Congress on April 22, 1988, including that ‘Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932-1933.’”
On February 8, 2023, the United States House of Representatives expressed the sense that the Ukrainian famine of 1932–1933, known as the Holodomor, is recognized as a genocide.
In the course of this analysis I have not been able to locate a proclamation by President Donald J. Trump during his first term 2016-2020 or this (10 months) recognizing the Holodomor as genocide or simply paying respects to the 7-10 million victims, 4 million of them children.
November 20, 2025