FOR THE RECORD: Pulitzer Prize Board has the power to admit Duranty's unworthiness (06/15/03)

FOR THE RECORD

Pulitzer Prize Board has the power to admit Duranty's unworthiness

Following is the text of a letter sent to the Pulitzer Prize Board on May 12 by Natalia Pylypiuk, associate professor and associate chair for undergraduate studies of the department of modern languages and cultural studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. She is also president of the Canadian Association of Slavists.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Seventy years ago, Anna Wlasenko, a 12-year-old girl from Kaharlyk (Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine) was thrown into a mass grave designated for those of her townsmen who had died of famine. The Soviet officials in charge of collecting and burying bodies did not think that the child would make it, and thus were ready to bury her alive. Thanks to the kindness of a relative who gave up her meagre savings to bribe the official in charge, Anna was retrieved from the pit.

Unlike most of her relatives (and millions of her countrymen), Anna survived the man-made famine of 1933. She subsequently lived through Stalin's terror, served as a nurse in the Soviet army, became a prisoner of war in Stalag No. 13, was liberated, and then taken as a slave laborer to Berlin. In short, history was extremely brutal to her and her entire generation.

One of the many unkind acts heaped upon Anna and her coevals was the mendacity of Walter Duranty, a reporter for The New York Times, who perpetrated lies about the situation in the then USSR and actively covered up the famine. Duranty was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1932, at a time when the forced collectivization that had begun in 1929 was already beginning to show its tragic results.

The Committee on Pulitzer Prizes has it in its power to revoke the prize that should have never been awarded to Mr. Duranty. I beseech the committee to do so.

Anna Wlasenko is my mother. As my family sits down in October to celebrate her 82nd birthday and to commemorate all those grandparents, uncles and aunts who did not survive 1933, there could be no greater gift than being able to announce that, finally, Mr. Duranty's unworthiness has been acknowledged by the Pulitzer Committee.

Sincerely yours,
Natalia Pylypiuk

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