Walter Duranty

Walter Duranty (1884 – October 3, 1957) was a controversial Liverpool-born British-American journalist who served as the Moscow bureau chief of the New York Times from 1922 through 1936. For a series of stories written in 1931 on the Soviet Union Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize. Duranty has been criticized for his denial of widespread famine, most particularly the Ukraine mass starvation in the 1930s. Many years later there were calls to revoke his Pulitzer, with even the Times acknowledging that his articles constituted "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper."

Early career

Duranty was born to a prominent Protestant merchant family in largely Catholic Liverpool.^{[citation needed]} After finishing college, Duranty moved to Paris. 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.

Career in Moscow

Duranty moved to the Soviet Union 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.

Views on the Soviet Union

In the reporting that won him the Pulitzer Prize, Duranty held that the Russian people were "Asiatic" 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 felt that Stalin scrapped 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 kulaks, 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 Siberian 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."

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 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 Duranty — whose 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."

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, 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.

Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley 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.

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 II, 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.

• Robert Conquest 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.
• Malcolm Muggeridge called Duranty "the greatest liar I ever knew." What Alsop said was: "Lying was Duranty's stock in trade."
• 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.

Duranty's biographer, S. J. Taylor ("Stalin's Apologist," Oxford University Press, 1990) argues that Duranty's reporting was a critical factor in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1933 decision to grant official recognition to the Soviet Union.

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 Conquest'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."

Some claim that recently discovered documents from the estate of Duranty have paved way for a further appeal to remove the Pulitzer status based upon alleged forgeries and plagiarized manuscripts.

Works

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

Pulitzer Prize articles

• "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"

Translations

• The 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

See also

• Gareth Jones (journalist)
• Journalism scandals
• Lion Feuchtwanger
• Louis Fischer
• Malcolm Muggeridge

References

Sources

• Muggeridge, Malcolm Winter in Moscow (1934)
• Conquest, Robert The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties (1968)
• Conquest, Robert, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (1986)
• Crowl, James W. Angels in Stalin's Paradise: Western Reporters in Soviet Russia, 1917–1937; A Case Study of Louis Fischer and Walter Duranty. Washington, D.C.: The University of America Press (1981), ISBN 0-8191-2185-1
• Taylor, Sally J. Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times Man in Moscow. Oxford University Press (1990), ISBN 0-19-505700-7

External links

Defence of Stalin's purges

• "The Moscow Trials"

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"

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"