«Crimes of Khrushchev» at the Hearings of the Committeeof the Un-American Activities in 1959: Genocide of the Ukrainian People

The concept of the Soviet Union as a state pursuing an aggressive foreign policy, constantly provoking the aggravation of Soviet-American relations is dominated in the Western historical narrative. That period of the Cold War, when N.S. Khrushchev led the USSR, is called «the Thaw» and is characterized by the Soviet leader’s trip to the USA. The leitmotif of this trip was the proposal to «live in peace and friendship». To coincide with this visit, the Committee on Un-American Activities timed hearings of the lower house of the US Congress on the socalled «crimes of Khrushchev». As the so-called Ukrainian «witnesses» who fled from the USSR, who not only took an irreconcilable anti-Soviet position, but were Nazis collaborationists during the Great Patriotic War, were invited as witnesses. Some of them collaborated with the US CIA, too. At the 2nd hearings of the Committee, «Americans with a Ukrainian background» testified about the genocide of the Ukrainian population by the Soviet authorities: the Holodomor, the purges of the 1930s, torture in the «prisons of the NKVD», provoking the Nazis to exterminate the population during the years of occupation, post-war famine, massacres and deportations, cultural genocide. Formulated anti-Soviet concepts, put into the mouths of Ukrainian witnesses, became the core of Western narratives about Soviet Ukraine in subsequent decades, right up to the present day. This study introduces into scientific circulation the materials of the hearings of the Committee on Un-American Activities on the «crimes of Khrushchev», which can be used as part of countering the distortion of the history of Russia during the Soviet period