Turning the pages back...

February 28, 1982

In February 1982, the Harvard Ukrainian Studies Fund reported that, in his new book "FDR, 1882-1945: A Centenary Remembrance," Joseph Alsop called the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine a "terrible truth" that was concealed from the West.

Viking Press published the 256-page, illustrated volume to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States. As Washington correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune, Mr. Alsop knew Roosevelt, who was also his distant relative.

According to a story originating from Harvard's USF that appeared in The Ukrainian Weekly on February 28, 1982, Mr. Alsop writes that in 1933 William Stoneman, then in Moscow as a correspondent for the old Chicago Daily News, had contrived to go to Ukraine and send out an accurate account of what was happening there. The Soviets thereupon facilitated the trip to Ukraine of Walter Duranty, correspondent of The New York Times. Mr. Duranty later reported that he saw no horrors there. This "Duranty cover-up," as Mr. Alsop calls it, succeeded so well that afterwards no one told how 5 million Ukrainians died in the famine Stalin had artificially created.

From 1974 to 1978, it should be noted, Mr. Alsop was chairman of the Visiting Committee to the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard. The committee, which includes American and Ukrainian scholars, community leaders and businessmen, reports to Harvard University on the work of the institute.

Source: "FDR commemorative volume calls 1930s famine 'terrible truth,' " The Ukrainian Weekly, February 28, 1982, Vol. L, No. 9.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 23, 2003, No. 8, Vol. LXXI

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