Walter Duranty

Walter Duranty (1884–1957), born in Liverpool, England, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a set of stories he wrote in 1931 as The New York Times’ Moscow correspondent, covering Joseph Stalin's Five-Year Plan to industrialize the Soviet Union. Duranty lived twelve years in Moscow.

Criticisms

In recent years, some conservative scholars, such as Andrew Stuttaford and Sally J. Taylor, have criticized Duranty for what they see as excessive deference to Stalin and the Soviet Union. [1] The New York Times hired a professor of Russian history to review Duranty's work. That professor, Mark Von Hagen of Columbia University, says Mr. Duranty's reports were unbalanced and uncritical, and they far too often gave voice to Stalinist propaganda. [2]

In his New York Times articles (such as March 31, 1933 article), Duranty repeatedly denied the existence of a Ukrainian famine in 1932–33. In an article in NYT, August 24 1933, he claimed "any report of a famine is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda", but admitted privately to William Strang (British Embassy, Moscow September 26, 1933) that "it is quite possible that as many as ten million people may have died directly or indirectly from lack of food in the Soviet Union during the past year" [3].

American engineer Zara Witkin and UK intelligence claim Duranty misrepresented this. Several organizations have called on the Pulitzer Board to revoke his prize, but in 2003 the Board issued a statement announcing its decision not to revoke the prize, although it did state that "Mr. Duranty's 1931 work, measured by today's standards for foreign reporting, falls seriously short". Duranty was also criticized for defending Stalin's notorious show trials.

The English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who worked in the Ukraine as a journalist for Manchester Guardian called Duranty "the greatest liar I have met in journalism".

External links

Articles by Duranty

Miscellaneous

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