Walter Duranty
Encyclopedia
Walter Duranty was a Liverpool
-born British
journalist who served as the Moscow
bureau chief of the New York Times from 1922 through 1936. Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize
in 1932 for a set of stories written in 1931 on the Soviet Union. Duranty has been criticized for his denial of widespread famine, most particularly the Ukraine mass starvation
, in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
. During the First World War, he held a job as a reporter. In 1919, he gained initial notice from a story about the Paris Peace Conference
. He then moved to Riga
to cover events in the newly independent Baltic States.
in 1921. While he was traveling by train from Paris to Le Havre
during a holiday from Moscow
in 1924, Duranty's left leg was injured in a train wreck. After he was initially operated on, the surgeon discovered gangrene
in the leg, and it was removed. After recovering, Duranty continued his career as a journalist
in the Soviet Union. In 1929, he was granted an exclusive interview with Joseph Stalin
which enhanced his reputation. Duranty was to remain in Moscow for twelve years, returning to the United States in 1934. Thereafter he remained on retainer
for The New York Times, which required him to spend several months a year in Moscow. In this capacity he reported on the show trials of the later 1930s.
, Duranty held that the Russian people were "Asia
tic" in thought. That meant to him that they valued communal effort and required autocratic government. In his view, individuality and private enterprise were alien concepts to the Russian people which led only to social disruption, and were unacceptable to them just as tyranny and Communism
were unacceptable to Westerners
. Attempts since the time of Peter the Great to apply Western
ideals in Russia
were a failed form of European colonialism
that had been finally swept away by the 1917 Revolution. Vladimir Lenin
and his New Economic Policy
were both failures tainted by Western thought.
Duranty saw Stalin as getting rid of the New Economic Policy because he had no political competition. The famine demonstrated the lack of organized opposition to Stalin, because his position was never truly threatened by the catastrophe; Stalin's purges surely contributed to this political vacuum. Stalin did what Lenin could only try to do, “re-established a dictator of the imperial
idea and put himself in charge” by means of intimidation. “Stalin didn’t look upon himself as a dictator, but as a ‘guardian of a sacred flame’ that he called Stalinism
for lack of a better name.” Stalin’s five-year plan was an attempt to effect a new way of life for the Russian people.
Duranty argued that the Soviet Union’s mentality in 1931 greatly differed from the perception created by Marxist ideas. Duranty claimed “It would be more proper to refer to the principle present during the period of Stalin’s reign as Stalinism.” Stalinism in Duranty’s view is a progression and integration of Marxism combined with Leninism
. In a June 24, 1931 article in the New York Times, Duranty gives his views of the Soviet actions in the countryside that eventually led to the famine in Ukraine
. He asserted that the kulak
s, i.e., the allegedly rich peasants who opposed the collectivization of farming had been an "almost privileged
class
" under Lenin. Duranty said that just as the Bolsheviks had eliminated the former ruling class
of the Czarist regime, so would the same fate now befall the kulaks, whom he numbered at 5,000,000. They would be "dispossessed, dispersed, demolished".
Duranty compared Stalin's logic in the matter to that of the Biblical Prophet
Samuel or Tamerlane. He said that these people were to be "'liquidated' or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty sometimes claimed that individuals being sent to the Siberia
n labor camps were given a choice between rejoining Soviet society and becoming underprivileged outsiders. However, he also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death." Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief
for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.
Rather than just repeating the Stalinist viewpoint, Duranty often admitted the brutality of the Stalinist system and then proceeded to both explain and defend why dictatorship or brutality were necessary. In addition, he repeated Soviet views as his own opinion, as if his 'observations' from Moscow had given him deeper insights into the country as a whole.
In his praise of Joseph Stalin
as an imperial, national, "authentically Russian" dictator [Stalin was not in fact Russian, but Georgian
, or, more precisely, ethnic Ossetian
] to be compared to Ivan the Terrible, Duranty was expressing views similar to those of some White émigrés during the same period, namely the Smenovekhovtsy, echoing still earlier hopes by the Eurasianist
and Mladorossi
currents in the 1920s.
Stalin himself praised Duranty in 1933, saying that Duranty "(tried) to tell the truth about our country."
On March 31, 1933, Walter Duranty denounced the famine stories and Gareth Jones
in the New York Times. In the piece, he described the situation under the title "Russians Hungry, But Not Starving" as follows: "In the middle of the diplomatic duel between Great Britain and the Soviet Union over the accused British engineers, there appears from a British source a big scare story in the American press about famine in the Soviet Union, with 'thousands already dead and millions menaced by death from starvation." Malcolm Muggeridge
, a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, called Duranty a "liar".
The duel in the press over the famine stories did not damage esteem for Durantywhose reporting The Nation
had described as "the most enlightened, dispassionate dispatches from a great nation in the making which appeared in any newspaper in the world." Following sensitive negotiations which resulted in the establishment of relations between the U.S. and USSR in November 1933, a dinner was given for Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov
in New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Each of the attendees' names was read in turn, politely applauded by the guests, until Duranty's. Whereupon, Alexander Woollcott
wrote, "the one really prolonged pandemonium was evoked.... Indeed, one quite got the impression that America, in a spasm of discernment, was recognizing both Russia and Walter Duranty."
He wrote several books on the Soviet Union after 1940. His name was on Orwell's list
, a list of people which George Orwell
prepared in March 1949 for the Information Research Department
, a propaganda unit set up at the Foreign Office by the Labour government. Orwell considered these people to have pro-communist leanings and therefore to be inappropriate to write for the IRD.
Duranty died in Florida in 1957.
called Walter Duranty "my old friend" and quoted from Duranty's book "I write as I please" twice in his book Magick Without Tears
. Some authors, such as S.J. Taylor, claim an association between Crowley and Duranty going back to 1913 in Paris. These same authors have also claimed that Duranty was married to Jane Cheron. But no primary documentation for the marriage has been demonstrated by the authors.
, Joseph E. Davies
, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1936–1938, positively represented both "Russia and its people in their gallant struggle to preserve the peace until ruthless aggression made war inevitable" and Stalin as a "decent and clean-living" man and "a great leader."
Many reporters of Duranty's time slanted their coverage in favour for the Soviet Union, either because the capitalist world was sinking under the weight of the Great Depression, out of a true belief in communism or out of fear of expulsion which would result in the loss of livelihood. Also, many editors found it hard to believe a state would deliberately starve millions of its own people. However, even with this to consider, Duranty's reports were the source of much frustration from Times readers during 1932, as his reports directly contradicted the paper's own editorial page.
While Duranty has been criticized generally for deferring to Joseph Stalin
's and the Soviet Union
's official propaganda
rather than reporting news from Moscow, the major controversy regarding his work is his reporting on the great famine of 1932–1933. Since the 1970s, Duranty's work has come under increasingly harsh fire for reporting there was no famine, even while it was clear from his personal exchanges that he was fully aware of the scale of the calamity.
Duranty has also been retrospectively criticized for defending Stalin's notorious show trials
.
's The Harvest of Sorrow, former Moscow bureau reporter Craig Whitney wrote that Duranty all but ignored the famine until it was almost over.
In 2003, after the Pulitzer Board began a renewed inquiry, the Times hired Mark von Hagen
, professor of Russian history at Columbia University
, to review Duranty's work. Von Hagen found Duranty's reports to be unbalanced and uncritical, and that they far too often gave voice to Stalinist
propaganda
. In comments to the press he stated, "For the sake of The New York Times' honor, they should take the prize away." The Times sent von Hagen's report to the Pulitzer Board and left it to the Board to take whatever action they considered appropriate. In a letter accompanying the report, Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. called Duranty's work "slovenly" and said it "should have been recognized for what it was by his editors and by his Pulitzer judges seven decades ago."
Ultimately, the Admin of the board, Sig Gissler, refused to rescind the award because "there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case." Recent discovered documents from the estate of Duranty have paved way for a former appeal to further remove the Pulitzer status based upon alleged forgeries and plagiarized manuscripts, October 14, 2011, New York Times.
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
-born British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
journalist who served as the Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
bureau chief of the New York Times from 1922 through 1936. Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
in 1932 for a set of stories written in 1931 on the Soviet Union. Duranty has been criticized for his denial of widespread famine, most particularly the Ukraine mass starvation
Holodomor
The Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...
, in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
Early career
Duranty was born to a prominent Protestant merchant family in largely Catholic Liverpool. After finishing college, Duranty moved to ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. During the First World War, he held a job as a reporter. In 1919, he gained initial notice from a story about the Paris Peace Conference
Paris Peace Conference, 1919
The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities...
. He then moved to Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
to cover events in the newly independent Baltic States.
Career in Moscow
Duranty moved to the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1921. While he was traveling by train from Paris to Le Havre
Le Havre
Le Havre is a city in the Seine-Maritime department of the Haute-Normandie region in France. It is situated in north-western France, on the right bank of the mouth of the river Seine on the English Channel. Le Havre is the most populous commune in the Haute-Normandie region, although the total...
during a holiday from Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
in 1924, Duranty's left leg was injured in a train wreck. After he was initially operated on, the surgeon discovered gangrene
Gangrene
Gangrene is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies . This may occur after an injury or infection, or in people suffering from any chronic health problem affecting blood circulation. The primary cause of gangrene is reduced blood...
in the leg, and it was removed. After recovering, Duranty continued his career as a journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
in the Soviet Union. In 1929, he was granted an exclusive interview with Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
which enhanced his reputation. Duranty was to remain in Moscow for twelve years, returning to the United States in 1934. Thereafter he remained on retainer
Retainer agreement
A retainer agreement is a work for hire contract. It falls between a one-time contract and full-time employment. Its distinguishing feature is that the employer pays in advance for work to be specified later...
for The New York Times, which required him to spend several months a year in Moscow. In this capacity he reported on the show trials of the later 1930s.
Views on the Soviet Union
In the reporting that won him the Pulitzer PrizePulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
, Duranty held that the Russian people were "Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
tic" in thought. That meant to him that they valued communal effort and required autocratic government. In his view, individuality and private enterprise were alien concepts to the Russian people which led only to social disruption, and were unacceptable to them just as tyranny and Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
were unacceptable to Westerners
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
. Attempts since the time of Peter the Great to apply Western
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
ideals in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
were a failed form of European colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
that had been finally swept away by the 1917 Revolution. Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
and his New Economic Policy
New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small animal businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade,...
were both failures tainted by Western thought.
Duranty saw Stalin as getting rid of the New Economic Policy because he had no political competition. The famine demonstrated the lack of organized opposition to Stalin, because his position was never truly threatened by the catastrophe; Stalin's purges surely contributed to this political vacuum. Stalin did what Lenin could only try to do, “re-established a dictator of the imperial
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
idea and put himself in charge” by means of intimidation. “Stalin didn’t look upon himself as a dictator, but as a ‘guardian of a sacred flame’ that he called Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
for lack of a better name.” Stalin’s five-year plan was an attempt to effect a new way of life for the Russian people.
Duranty argued that the Soviet Union’s mentality in 1931 greatly differed from the perception created by Marxist ideas. Duranty claimed “It would be more proper to refer to the principle present during the period of Stalin’s reign as Stalinism.” Stalinism in Duranty’s view is a progression and integration of Marxism combined with Leninism
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
. In a June 24, 1931 article in the New York Times, Duranty gives his views of the Soviet actions in the countryside that eventually led to the famine in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
. He asserted that the kulak
Kulak
Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...
s, i.e., the allegedly rich peasants who opposed the collectivization of farming had been an "almost privileged
Privileged group
In economics, a privileged group is one possible condition for the production of public goods.A privileged group contains at least one individual that benefits more from a public good than its production costs. Therefore, the good will be produced although other members of the group benefit without...
class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
" under Lenin. Duranty said that just as the Bolsheviks had eliminated the former ruling class
Ruling class
The term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy - assuming there is one such particular class in the given society....
of the Czarist regime, so would the same fate now befall the kulaks, whom he numbered at 5,000,000. They would be "dispossessed, dispersed, demolished".
Duranty compared Stalin's logic in the matter to that of the Biblical Prophet
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
Samuel or Tamerlane. He said that these people were to be "'liquidated' or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty sometimes claimed that individuals being sent to the Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
n labor camps were given a choice between rejoining Soviet society and becoming underprivileged outsiders. However, he also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death." Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief
Brief (law)
A brief is a written legal document used in various legal adversarial systems that is presented to a court arguing why the party to the case should prevail....
for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.
Rather than just repeating the Stalinist viewpoint, Duranty often admitted the brutality of the Stalinist system and then proceeded to both explain and defend why dictatorship or brutality were necessary. In addition, he repeated Soviet views as his own opinion, as if his 'observations' from Moscow had given him deeper insights into the country as a whole.
In his praise of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
as an imperial, national, "authentically Russian" dictator [Stalin was not in fact Russian, but Georgian
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
, or, more precisely, ethnic Ossetian
Ossetia
Ossetia Ossetic: Ир, Ирыстон Ir, Iryston; Russian: Осетия, Osetiya; Georgian: ოსეთი, Oset'i) is an ethnolinguistic region located on both sides of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, largely inhabited by the Ossetians. The Ossetian language is part of the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-European...
] to be compared to Ivan the Terrible, Duranty was expressing views similar to those of some White émigrés during the same period, namely the Smenovekhovtsy, echoing still earlier hopes by the Eurasianist
Eurasianists
Eurasianism is a political movement within the primarily Russian emigre community.-Early 20th century:Eurasianists was a political movement in the Russian emigre community in the 1920s...
and Mladorossi
Mladorossi
The Union of Mladorossi was a political group of Russian émigré monarchists who advocated a hybrid of Russian monarchy and the Soviet system, best evidenced by their motto "Tsar and the Soviets"....
currents in the 1920s.
Stalin himself praised Duranty in 1933, saying that Duranty "(tried) to tell the truth about our country."
Reporting the famine
In a New York Times article dated 23 August 1933, Duranty wrote, "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda. The food shortage, however, which has affected the whole population in the last year and particularly in the grain-producing provinces—the Ukraine, North Caucasus, the Lower Volga—has, however, caused heavy loss of life." Duranty concluded "it is conservative to suppose" that in certain provinces with a total population of over 40 million mortality had "at least trebled."On March 31, 1933, Walter Duranty denounced the famine stories and Gareth Jones
Gareth Jones (journalist)
Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones was a Welsh journalist who first publicised the existence of the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33, the Holodomor, in the Western world.-Life and career:...
in the New York Times. In the piece, he described the situation under the title "Russians Hungry, But Not Starving" as follows: "In the middle of the diplomatic duel between Great Britain and the Soviet Union over the accused British engineers, there appears from a British source a big scare story in the American press about famine in the Soviet Union, with 'thousands already dead and millions menaced by death from starvation." Malcolm Muggeridge
Malcolm Muggeridge
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy...
, a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, called Duranty a "liar".
The duel in the press over the famine stories did not damage esteem for Durantywhose reporting The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
had described as "the most enlightened, dispassionate dispatches from a great nation in the making which appeared in any newspaper in the world." Following sensitive negotiations which resulted in the establishment of relations between the U.S. and USSR in November 1933, a dinner was given for Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov
Maxim Litvinov
Maxim Maximovich Litvinov was a Russian revolutionary and prominent Soviet diplomat.- Early life and first exile :...
in New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Each of the attendees' names was read in turn, politely applauded by the guests, until Duranty's. Whereupon, Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table....
wrote, "the one really prolonged pandemonium was evoked.... Indeed, one quite got the impression that America, in a spasm of discernment, was recognizing both Russia and Walter Duranty."
Later career
Duranty left Moscow in 1934. Later in that same year, he visited the White House in the company of Soviet Officials including Litvinov. He continued as a special correspondent for the New York Times through 1940.He wrote several books on the Soviet Union after 1940. His name was on Orwell's list
Orwell's list
Orwell's list, prepared in 1949 by the English author George Orwell, shortly before he died, comprises names of notable writers and other individuals he considered to be unsuitable as possible writers for the Information Research Department's anti-communist propaganda activities.-Background:The...
, a list of people which George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
prepared in March 1949 for the Information Research Department
Information Research Department
The Information Research Department, founded in 1948 by Christopher Mayhew MP, was a department of the British Foreign Office set up to counter Russian propaganda and infiltration, particularly amongst the western labour movement....
, a propaganda unit set up at the Foreign Office by the Labour government. Orwell considered these people to have pro-communist leanings and therefore to be inappropriate to write for the IRD.
Duranty died in Florida in 1957.
Aleister Crowley
Aleister CrowleyAleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
called Walter Duranty "my old friend" and quoted from Duranty's book "I write as I please" twice in his book Magick Without Tears
Magick Without Tears
Magick Without Tears, a series of letters, was the last book written by English occultist Aleister Crowley , although it was not published until after his death. It was written in the mid-1940s and published in 1954 with a foreword by its editor, Karl Germer.-Summary:The book consists of 80 letters...
. Some authors, such as S.J. Taylor, claim an association between Crowley and Duranty going back to 1913 in Paris. These same authors have also claimed that Duranty was married to Jane Cheron. But no primary documentation for the marriage has been demonstrated by the authors.
Scholarship on Duranty's work
Duranty's work on the Soviet Union was done at a time when opinions were strongly divided on the country and its leadership. The Soviet Union's participation in the League of Nations was viewed optimistically by some. Others saw an inevitable confrontation between fascism and communism as requiring individuals to take one side or the other. Even into World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Joseph E. Davies
Joseph E. Davies
Joseph Edward Davies was appointed by President Wilson to be Commissioner of Corporations in 1912, and First Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission in 1915. He was the second Ambassador to represent the United States in the Soviet Union and U.S. Ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg...
, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1936–1938, positively represented both "Russia and its people in their gallant struggle to preserve the peace until ruthless aggression made war inevitable" and Stalin as a "decent and clean-living" man and "a great leader."
Many reporters of Duranty's time slanted their coverage in favour for the Soviet Union, either because the capitalist world was sinking under the weight of the Great Depression, out of a true belief in communism or out of fear of expulsion which would result in the loss of livelihood. Also, many editors found it hard to believe a state would deliberately starve millions of its own people. However, even with this to consider, Duranty's reports were the source of much frustration from Times readers during 1932, as his reports directly contradicted the paper's own editorial page.
While Duranty has been criticized generally for deferring to Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
's official propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
rather than reporting news from Moscow, the major controversy regarding his work is his reporting on the great famine of 1932–1933. Since the 1970s, Duranty's work has come under increasingly harsh fire for reporting there was no famine, even while it was clear from his personal exchanges that he was fully aware of the scale of the calamity.
- Robert ConquestRobert ConquestGeorge Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
has written several books, starting in the 1970s including The Great Terror and Harvest of Sorrow, most recently Reflections on a Ravaged Century in 1990, which have been critical of Duranty's reporting from the Soviet Union. - Political commentators such as Joe Alsop and Andrew Stuttaford have criticized Duranty.
- American engineer Zara Witkin (who worked in the USSR from 1932 to 1934) and UK intelligence have shown that Duranty knowingly misrepresented the famine.
Duranty has also been retrospectively criticized for defending Stalin's notorious show trials
Moscow Trials
The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...
.
Calls for revocation of Pulitzer Prize
Criticism of Duranty's reporting on the famine led to a move to posthumously and symbolically strip him of his Pulitzer award he garnered in 1932, the year of the famine. (The Pulitzer in question did not involve the famine.) In response to Taylor's book, the Times assigned a member of its editorial board, Karl Meyer, to write a signed editorial regarding Duranty's work. In a scathing piece, Meyer said that Duranty's articles were "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper." Duranty, Meyer said, had bet his career on Stalin's rise and "strove to preserve it by ignoring or excusing Stalin's crimes." Four years earlier, in a review of Robert ConquestRobert Conquest
George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
's The Harvest of Sorrow, former Moscow bureau reporter Craig Whitney wrote that Duranty all but ignored the famine until it was almost over.
In 2003, after the Pulitzer Board began a renewed inquiry, the Times hired Mark von Hagen
Mark Von Hagen
Mark von Hagen teaches Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian history at Arizona State University. He was formerly at Columbia University...
, professor of Russian history at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, to review Duranty's work. Von Hagen found Duranty's reports to be unbalanced and uncritical, and that they far too often gave voice to Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
. In comments to the press he stated, "For the sake of The New York Times' honor, they should take the prize away." The Times sent von Hagen's report to the Pulitzer Board and left it to the Board to take whatever action they considered appropriate. In a letter accompanying the report, Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. called Duranty's work "slovenly" and said it "should have been recognized for what it was by his editors and by his Pulitzer judges seven decades ago."
Ultimately, the Admin of the board, Sig Gissler, refused to rescind the award because "there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case." Recent discovered documents from the estate of Duranty have paved way for a former appeal to further remove the Pulitzer status based upon alleged forgeries and plagiarized manuscripts, October 14, 2011, New York Times.
See also
- Gareth Jones (journalist)Gareth Jones (journalist)Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones was a Welsh journalist who first publicised the existence of the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33, the Holodomor, in the Western world.-Life and career:...
- Journalism scandalsJournalism scandalsJournalism scandals are high-profile incidents or acts, whether intentional or accidental, that run contrary to the generally accepted ethics and standards of journalism, or otherwise violate the 'ideal' mission of journalism: to report news events and issues accurately and fairly.-Journalistic...
- Lion FeuchtwangerLion FeuchtwangerLion Feuchtwanger was a German-Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht....
- Louis FischerLouis FischerLouis Fischer was a Jewish-American journalist. Among his works were a contribution to the ex-Communist treatise The God that Failed, The Life of Lenin, which won a 1965 National Book Award, as well as a biography of Mahatma Gandhi entitled The Life of Mahatma Gandhi...
- Malcolm MuggeridgeMalcolm MuggeridgeThomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy...
Pulitzer Prize articles by Walter Duranty
- "Red Russia of Today Ruled by Stalinism, Not Communism"
- "Socialism First Aim in Soviet's Program; Trade Gains Second"
- "Stalinism Shelves World Revolt Idea; To Win Russia First"
- "Industrial Success Emboldens Soviet in New World Policy"
- "Trade Equilibrium is New Soviet Goal"
- "Soviet Fixes Opinion by Widest Control"
- "Soviet Censorship Hurts Russia Most"
- "Stalinism Smashes Foes in Marx's Name"
- "Red Army is Held No Menace to Peace"
- "Stalinism Solving Minorities Problem"
- "Stalinism's Mark is Party Discipline"
- "The Russian Looks at the World"
- "Stalin's Russia Is An Echo of Iron Ivan's"
Defence of Stalin's purges
Books
(chronological)- The Curious Lottery and Other Tales of Russian Justice. New York: Coward-McCann, 1929
- Red Economics. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932
- Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934
- I Write As I Please. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935
- Europe—War or Peace? World Affairs Pamphlets No. 7. New York: Foreign Policy Association and Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1935.
- One Life, One Kopeck—A Novel. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1937
- Babies Without Tails, Stories by Walter Duranty. New York: Modern Age Books, 1937
- The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941
- USSR: The Story of Soviet Russia. New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1944
- Stalin & Co.: The Politburo, The Men Who Run Russia. New York: W. Sloane Associates, 1949
Periodicals
(contributor)- ASIA Magazine, Volume XXXV, Number 11; November, 1935
- ASIA Magazine, Volume XXXVI, Number 2; February, 1936
- Redbook; March, 1928
Translations
- Story of the Lafayette Escadrille. Told by its Commander, Captain Georges Thenault. Translated by Walter Duranty. Boston: Small, Maynard & Company (1921).
Literary awards
(other than Pulitzer)- O. Henry Awards, First Prize, 1928, for "The Parrot", appearing in Redbook, March 1928
The Pulitzer Prize controversy
- The section of articles regarding the campaign to revoke Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize
- The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain — Duranty Protest Site
- The Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) – W. Duranty Protest
- Ukrainian Congress Committee of America official site about Walter Duranty and Holodomor
- Zara Witkin's memoir of Soviet Russia, see pages 208–210
- Pulitzer Prize Board Statement on Walter Duranty's 1932 Prize
- Markian Pelech, "Critique of Sigvard Gissler's Statement on Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize"
- New York Times Statement About 1932 Pulitzer Prize Awarded to Walter Duranty
- Markian Pelech, "The New York Times Admits the Invalidation of Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize"
- 2003 Observer article, "Ukrainians want pro-Stalin writer stripped of Pulitzer"