Walter Duranty, Stalin and the Ukrainian Famine of 1932−33

I have never been to Ukraine. Nor, to my knowledge, have I met a native of that country of 42 million on Russia’s western border. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, it became independent—which is not to say the Bear does not still cling tightly; a bitter on-going dispute lingers about the rightful ownership of the Crimean peninsula.

The issue here is something that happened almost nine decades ago, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor. A man-made famine took place, the worst of it lasting two years. As is the nature of such events, the number of people who starved to death is uncertain. The most reliable estimates say between 7 and 10 million. Five international organizations today regard the Ukrainian famine as a crime against humanity perpetrated by the Communist regime of which Joseph Stalin was then the head, and 34 countries (including the United States) go a step further, calling it attempted genocide.

This is a vast topic that scholars hotly debate, but I will attempt to distill it. More than a decade after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the USSR was seeking to become a highly industrialized country. Aiding in that process was agricultural collectivization. No more small family farms, even if they were efficient and produced abundant food. Ukraine had long been the breadbasket of Russia, so Stalin focused his attention there. A part of his first 5-year plan, the expropriation of grain and other forms of food was implemented in a harsh and inhumane way. Many died, and many of those who did not were sent to Siberia with little means of survival. These people were peasants, most of whom went to sad and pathetic deaths. (Not all, however. There were some protests, escapes and revolts.) It was a thoroughgoing disaster—food production fell, and the Ukrainians suffered horrendously.

The outside world heard rumors about something bad happening in Russia—the country Winston Churchill would characterize in 1939 as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Foreign reporters could have delved into the story and written about it, the most notable being Walter Duranty. The New York Times’ bureau chief from 1922 to 1936 and a correspondent for five years after that, he was an odd guy. Born in Liverpool, he had joined Aleister Crowley in some bizarre drug-sex-and-Satan rituals in earlier days. Part of his left leg had been amputated after a train accident in 1924, the year Vladimir Lenin died. Duranty was among the first Westerners to predict that Stalin (highly skilled at political infighting) would emerge as the next ruler of the Kremlin, and having done so won Stalin’s favor. The second foreign reporter to be granted an interview with the “man of steel,” he found much to like. I hesitate to say Duranty was a sycophant—Stalin had plenty of those—but he certainly qualified as a “useful idiot.” Familiar with the term? Said to derive from Lenin, it means naïve Westerners who were/are susceptible to Communist propaganda and manipulation. Lincoln Steffens, the progressive journalist best known for uncovering graft in American cities, was one. He went to the USSR in 1919, came back and made the fatuous statement “I have seen the future, and it works.” John Reed was another. Edgar Snow served the same dubious purpose in Mao Zedong’s China. A generation later, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir of France, and Susan Sontag of the USA were very useful idiots.

Duranty was not ideologically aligned with Communism, nor was he on the payroll of the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB). Rather, he fancied himself as an objective man with the ability to discern the truth of any matter. But the titles of his 11-part series which ran in the NYT in June 1931 convey an unmistakable slant: “Red Russia of Today Ruled by Stalinism, Not Communism,” “Socialism First Aim in Soviets’ Program; Trade Gains Second,” “Stalinism Shelves World Revolt Idea; To Win Russia First,” “Industrial Success Emboldens Soviet [Union] in New World Policy,” “Trade Equilibrium is New Soviet Goal,” “Soviet [Union] 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” and “Stalinism’s Mark is Party Discipline.”

Duranty’s series got wide play, was submitted to the Pulitzer Prize selection committee and won that honor in 1932. It is important to consider the times. The Great Depression was at its nadir, and many people were doubting democracy and capitalism. Europe and America had started to fear Adolf Hitler and Nazism more than the Russians, who were then getting good PR. Furthermore, newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt was determined to extend diplomatic recognition to the USSR—something Duranty had long advocated. In fact, Duranty was there at the White House in November 1933 when FDR and Maxim Litvinov signed the documents establishing bilateral relations. Soon thereafter, a splashy dinner was held at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The names of all 1,500 attendees were read, followed by tepid applause. There was one exception as Duranty’s sparked a standing ovation.

This amoral careerist did not write about the Ukrainian famine per se, merely alluding to it by the use of weasel words and euphemisms. Duranty was willing to admit there was hunger in the Soviet Union, but he simply would not acknowledge that things were much worse. In private conversation with other writers in the bar of the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, however, he talked about it plenty.  Millions were starving, and they knew it. The famine was a poorly kept secret.

Little by little, grisly tales from Ukraine got out. Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge were two Western reporters who went there and looked for themselves. They, along with Joseph Alsop and Eugene Lyons, loathed Duranty for his refusal to write honestly about the catastrophic Ukrainian famine. His managing editor at the NYT, Edwin L. James, felt the same and finally found a way to ease him out the door. Duranty’s reputation began a slow decline, especially as the awful truth about Ukraine came to light. (I feel obliged to pause here and point out that the Holodomor is no longer the worst famine in recorded history, having been easily surpassed by the one Mao fomented from 1958 to 1962, the so-called Great Leap Forward. The fatalities in China were approximately four times greater than in Russia.) He died in poverty, obscurity and alcoholism in Orlando, Florida in 1957.

Not until much later did Duranty become a real pariah. The publication of Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow (1986) and S.J. Taylor’s Stalin’s Apologist (1990), followed by the opening up of Soviet archives in the Glasnost era shocked historians and ordinary people. It proved beyond doubt that a famine had occurred, that Stalin’s cruel and boneheaded actions were the cause, and that Walter Duranty had obfuscated and sometimes flat-out lied. His journalistic probity was called into serious question. Ukrainian-American and other organizations began urging that his Pulitzer be revoked. They said the NYT should send it back. Neither has happened.

The newspaper has a hall proudly displaying its Pulitzer winners. The section devoted to Duranty now contains a note which states that his writing about the Ukrainian famine had been tendentious, slovenly and uncritical. This man, who never doubted the legitimacy of the show trials of 1936−1938, often found a way to put a smiley face on a grim country. He wrote that the deaths of all those peasants had been justified by Stalin’s noble purpose, his “march to progress.” Duranty felt that this and other Stalin-era atrocities were nothing to be very concerned about. “If you want to make omelettes,” he paraphrased Robespierre, “you have to break a few eggs.”