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COMMENT
Globe and Mail, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, October 25, 2003 - Page A22
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Walter Duranty, who reported from the Soviet Union for The New York
Times between 1922 and 1941, is probably the most tainted scribe in that
newspaper's long history.
In fact, such is the enormity of the correspondent's misreporting of events
in Stalin's Russia in the 1930s, and so great was his influence, that he
probably would qualify for worst reporter of all time were there such an
award. No picayune plagiarist he, Mr. Duranty helped cover up a genocide:
Stalin's deliberate killing by starvation of as many as seven million
Ukrainians in 1932-33.
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There is plenty of evidence to suggest Mr. Duranty did this deliberately.
According to one credible first-hand account, the Times correspondent once,
in the depths of the famine, breezily remarked that "a few million dead
Russians" were unimportant, given the "sweeping historical changes" then
under way in the country. In August of 1933, he dismissed reports of mass
starvation as "malignant propaganda." Earlier that year, on May 14, he had
coined the monstrously cynical phrase for which he is probably best
remembered: "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."
Small wonder, then, that Mark von Hagen, a Columbia University history
professor hired by the Times last summer to reassess Mr. Duranty's work,
has declared it egregiously biased and distorted, and called its author a
disgrace to the history of the Times.
It's also understandable that in 2003, the 70th anniversary of the famine,
Ukrainian groups worldwide have lobbied to have Mr. Duranty posthumously
stripped of his 1932 Pulitzer Prize, awarded for articles published in 1931.
With hindsight, it is hard to conceive of anyone less worthy of U.S. print
journalism's most prestigious award.
But that's the heart of the matter, isn't it? Hindsight. The Pulitzer Prize
board should think long and carefully. For there is no new information here.
And there is a whiff of historical revisionism.
It has been common knowledge for nearly two decades that Mr. Duranty
was a propagandist for Stalin. The Times began apologizing for his
dispatches
as early as 1986, with the publication of Robert Conquest's noted history of
the Ukrainian famine, The Harvest of Sorrow.
Moreover, Mr. Duranty was not given the prize for stories in which he denied
the famine. Those came later. In 1931, he was writing effusively about
Stalin's economic plan. As New York Times executive editor Bill Keller put
it this week, "The stuff he wrote in '31 was awful. The stuff he wrote in
'33 was shameful." That means Mr. Duranty would be stripped of his award
for later misdeeds. How many other prestigious prizewinners would then be in
similar straits?
History should not be airbrushed to suit current political tastes. That
smacks of, well, Stalin. It makes far more sense to try to understand the
context in which historical events occurred. In 1932 America, socialist
ideas were fashionable. Mr. Duranty was not the era's only apologist for the
Soviet dictator. He's just the best known.
In 1990, S.J. Taylor published Stalin's Apologist, a biography of Mr.
Duranty that excoriated his reportage. The Pulitzer board considered
revoking the award at the time, but opted not to because of the precedent
such a move would set. That was the right decision then. As now.
COMMENT, Globe and Mail, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, October 25, 2003 - Page A22
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20031025/EDUR25/
TPComment/Editorials
FOR PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC USE ONLY
EDITOR'S NOTE:
In addition to the error in judgment and the resulting serious error
in the conclusion found in the Glove and Mail Comment piece there
is also a factual ERROR by the writer of the COMMENT piece.
The writer of this COMMENT piece for The Globe and Mail states,
"In August of 1933, he [Duranty] dismissed reports of mass starvation
as 'malignant propaganda.' Earlier that year, on May 14, he had
coined the monstrously cynical phrase for which he is probably best
remembered: "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."
The date listed here, May 14, 1933, for Duranty's article in the New
York Times where he writes his "infamous" phrase about making an
omelette is NOT correct.
Duranty's article with his "infamous phrase" was published by the New
York Times on March 31, 2003. Duranty wrote this article on March
30th as a direct, immediate and hostile reply to the press conference
Welsh journalist Gareth Jones had in Berlin on March 29th upon
returning from his private visit to Ukraine.
Walter Duranty was reacting to the major coverage Gareth Jones's
statement about the real famine conditions in Ukraine [Russia] received
in the world press which of course were in direct contradiction to what
Duranty had been writing.
Duranty had an article in The New York Times on May 14th but it
did not contain his 'infamous" phrase.
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To read the entire March 31, 1933 New York Times's article by
Walter Duranty with the "infamous phrase" click on:
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http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty.htm
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To read the entire May 14, 1933 New York Times's article by
Walter Duranty click on:
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http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/duranty2.htm
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