WALTER DURANTY: A LIAR FOR A CAUSE 

Reading about the tragic anniversary of Famine and about Duranty it occurred to me that there had to be a reason for his duplicity in his reporting of the tragic Famine-Genocide which claimed millions of innocent lives. To learn more about him I read his book I WRITE AS I PLEASE, which he finished writing in 1935…
Reading the book was like traveling with Duranty to Moscow, where he became the New York Times Correspondent in 1920, and listening to his discussions with his friends and various governmental representatives, one gets a clear picture of who the man really was. The book is a memoir of Duranty's experiences as a journalist beginning with WW I and ending in 1935. His experiences deal primarily, though not exclusively, with the Soviet Union, which for him is Russia. He recounts his numerous journeys to various countries, particularly to France where, as a result of a train disaster in 1924 he lost his foot.
Duranty tells the reader that as a journalist he tried, from the very beginning "to lean over backwards in being fair to the Bolsheviks." Indeed, he pursued this line of reasoning so consistently as to become, ultimately, the apologist for the crimes committed by the Communist Party. Duranty was a great admirer of the first Five-Year Plan which, according to him, "succeeded far better than anyone abroad expected." Discussing the plan, he says that in "the final issue the crux of the struggle came in the villages where an attempt was being made to socialize, virtually overnight, a hundred million of the most stubborn and most ignorant peasants in the world." One should note that Duranty does not speak about collectivization. To him "socialization" is a much more acceptable term. Also, in the best Bolshevik tradition, Duranty refers to the peasants who resisted collectivization as "kulaks". A reader, who is familiar with the period, would note that there is not one word about the 1931-1933 Famine in Ukraine. He reports that on his way to Moscow he stopped in Ukraine where he observed "less evidence of damage, [damage from what? T.H.] but there were empty cottages in the villages that are usually so crowded, and marked scarcity of animals and poultry". Surely, he knew why the cottages were empty. Talking with William Strang, a British Representative of the Foreign Office, about the same trip to Ukraine Duranty not only discussed the problems (privately) in some detail, but expressed the opinion "that as many as 10 million people may have died directly or indirectly from lack of food in the Soviet Union during the past year".l His report to the American readers, however, sounded considerably different. Obviously, responding to a request for a clarification of the situation, Duranty responded that "there is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition".2 No wonder Stalin, whom Duranty met on Christmas day in 1933, expressed his approval of Duranty's performance when he said to Duranty "You have done a good job in your reporting of the U.S.S.R."(p.l66). Was that kind of reporting the basis of the Pulitzer Prize or was it the close relation of Duranty with Herbert Pulitzer, the son of Joseph Pulitzer, in whose name the Award was established in 1917? (pp. 74,140-44,148).
What explains Duranty's attitude, and therefore his reporting to the American people, is his obsession with the question of "whether the Soviet drive to Socialism is or is not successful irrespective of costs. I say to myself, he continued, I saw the War and that cost was worse and greater and the result in terms of human happiness was nil.. ..Here at least it seems the results are better in that the Russian peasant who.. .will within five years or less benefit enormously from being forced to accept a modern form of agriculture instead of the wasteful clumsy methods which he and grandfather and great-grandfather have followed since the days of Ham".(p.301)
What we see is the frequently recurring theme in Duranty's writing, that "the end justifies the means"(pp. 167, 287, 314, 315)… He was very enthusiastic about the Five-Year Plan (which launched collectivization), referring to those who implemented it as "the most determined and vital elements of the Soviet people united in support of their strong and resolute leadership."(pp.315-316) In Duranty's narrative there is an understated recognition that there were some problems in agriculture, but he says that what impressed him most was the fact "that there was no sign of faltering on the part of the Kremlin". (p.322)
So, who was this man, who was invited in July 1933 by Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democratic candidate for President to a luncheon? The question is not irrelevant when we consider that only four months later, on November 16, 1933 Roosevelt, the newly elected President, recognized the Soviet Union. Was Duranty, as some Britishers thought, "in the pay of the Soviet Government"3 or was he a willing convert? At the end of his book Duranty reveals his true political and moral identity when he says:
"Looking backwards over the fourteen years I have spent in Russia, I cannot escape the conclusion that this period has been a heroic chapter in the life of Humanity. During these years the first true Socialist State, with all that that implies in planned economy, in the ownership of production and means of production, in communal effort and in communal pride and interest in everything that the community rather than the individual accomplished, was constructed and set moving despite incredible difficulties. I am profoundly convinced that the U.S.S.R. is only just beginning to exercise its tremendous potentialities. "(340)
With such political CREDO there could not have been any room in the reports of Duranty about the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933, about political terrorism, concentration camps and mass murder. Practicing what he believed in, Duranty reported from Moscow about "progress" under communism, deceiving the American people about the tragedy of millions who perished under the totalitarian system and, perhaps, misleading the Roosevelt Administration into recognizing the Communist regime in 1933-the worst possible time. If that was the case, Duranty achieved his objective, having created and successfully propagated the image of progressive Soviet society, and for that he received his Pulitzer Prize. After all, he was a liar for a cause. 

Taras Hunczak

& For details of the conversation see, Marco Carynnyk, Lubomyr Y. Luciuk and Bohdan S. Kordan, Eds., THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND THE FAMINE: British Documents on Ukraine and the Great Famine of1932-1933. Kingston, Ontario, 1988, pp.309--313
a Walter Duranty, "Russians Hungry, But Not Starving," The New York Times, March 31, 1933. ffl THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND THE FAMINE, p.204.

PULITZER PRIZE BOARD
Statement on Walter Duranty's 1932 Prize
New York, Friday, Nov. 21, 2003 

"After more than six months of study and deliberation, the Pulitzer Prize Board has decided it will not revoke the foreign reporting prize awarded in 1932 to Walter Duranty of The New York Times.
In recent months, much attention has been paid to Mr. Duranty's dispatches regarding the famine in the Soviet Union in 1932-1933, which have been criticized as gravely defective. However, a Pulitzer Prize for reporting is awarded not for the author's body of work or for the author's character but for the specific pieces entered in the competition. 
In recent months, much attention has been paid to Mr. Duranty's dispatches regarding the famine in the Soviet Union in 1932-1933, which have been criticized as gravely defective. However, a Pulitzer Prize for reporting is awarded not for the author's body of work or for the author's character but for the specific pieces entered in the competition.
Therefore, the Board focused its attention on the 13 articles that actually won the prize, articles written and published during 1931. In its review of the 13 articles, the Board determined that Mr. Duranty's 1931 work, measured by today's standards for foreign reporting, falls seriously short. In that regard, the Board's view is similar to that of The New York Times itself and of some scholars who have examined his 1931 reports. However, the Board concluded that there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case. Revoking a prize 71 years after it was awarded under different circumstances, when all principals are dead and unable to respond, would be a momentous step and therefore would have to rise to that threshold. The famine of 1932-1933 was horrific and has not received the international attention it deserves. By its decision, the Board in no way wishes to diminish the gravity of that loss. The Board extends its sympathy to Ukrainians and others in the United States and throughout the world who still mourn the suffering and deaths brought on by Josef Stalin. 

Sig Gissler, administrator
Pulitzer Prizes
Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University
2950 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Phone: 212-854-7327; Fax: 212-854-3342
www.columbia.edu/~sg138

May 5, 2003

To whom it may concern:

I have spent some time researching the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 and really do not see what the controversy concerning revoking Walter Duranty's Pulitzer Prize is all about. The prize is, after all, awarded by a private foundation to promote the ideals of journalism it seeks to uphold. In a memorandum of June 4, 1931 by US diplomat A. W. Kliefoth, Walter Duranty dropped by the US Embassy in Berlin to have his passport renewed stated in conversation with the said diplomat reported that he was told by the journalist "in agreement with the New York Times and the Soviet government his official dispatches always reflect the opinion of the Soviet government and not his own." The document in question has been a matter of public record for some years now, and anyone may drop by the US National Archives in Washington DC to look for document 861.5017 on living conditions in the USSR/268, collection number T1249 in the Records of the Department of State, and even make a photocopy. In the following year this journalist was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting that he had already admitted "always reflected the opinion of the Soviet government and not his own," a government that some might consider one of the nastier of the twentieth century. If those entrusted with the legacy of Joseph Pulitzer wish to continue to uphold such ideals of journalism through the awarding of their prize in the spirit of which this legacy bespeaks, that is their affair, and the meaning of that prize can only be evaluated accordingly.

Sincerely,
James E. Mace, Ph.D.
Professor of Political Science
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy National University
Kyiv, Ukraine