FOR THE RECORD (07/20/03)

FOR THE RECORD

Letter to New York Times publisher

The letter below was sent to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times, by Askold Melnyczuk, founding editor of Agni, a literary magazine affiliated with the Boston University Writing Program. The letter is dated April 30.

Dear Mr. Sulzberger:

Congratulations on Clifford Levy's recent Pulitzer Prize. Reading over the impressive record of past winners which appeared in your pages soon after the announcement, I was, however, distressed to find Walter Duranty's name still listed as a recipient for 1932.

As you well know, Duranty was the Times' correspondent in Moscow during the famine of 1932-1933. In a year when millions starved to death, by design, largely in Ukraine, Duranty reported that Stalin's five-year plan was proceeding smoothly. Meanwhile, in private he acknowledged that as many as ten million people had died from hunger.

As an editor, I have tried to understand what kind of politics might lie behind the decision made by your newspaper and the Pulitzer committee not to rescind Duranty's prize - and to follow that up with an exhaustive series of articles on the famine which devastated Ukraine. I confess I am at a loss to rationalize away your unwillingness to revisit this blight on your record.

This indifference to journalistic ethics stokes the skepticism many of us bring to our reading of the Times today. I would, however, like to imagine that higher principles might yet prevail; it is never too late to amend an obvious wrong that continues to insult the moral intelligence of so many of your readers.

Sincerely,
Askold Melnyczuk

Mace weighs in on Duranty issue

The following letter was written by James E. Mace, Ph.D., professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv. Dr. Mace was the staff director of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine. His letter, dated May 5, appears on the website of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (www.uccla.ca) in the section on revoking Walter Duranty's Pulitzer Prize.

To Whom It May Concern:

I have spent some time researching the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 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 U.S. diplomat A. W. Kliefoth, Walter Duranty dropped by the U.S. Embassy in Berlin to have his passport renewed [and engaged] in conversation with the said diplomat [who] 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 U.S. National Archives in Washington 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 20th 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.

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