Ukraine's Famine researchers say Duranty's Pulitzer should be revoked (09/07/03)

Ukraine's Famine researchers say Duranty's Pulitzer should be revoked

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The actions of Walter Duranty - The New York Times journalist who glossed over and even repudiated the fact that famine and genocide were raging in Ukraine in 1932-1933 as he sat in Moscow living a life of leisure at Stalin's side - are not widely known among the Ukrainian populace. Ukrainian scholars, as well, are not fully aware of Mr. Duranty's role in keeping the horrid details from the West, even while Stalin worked to eliminate the Ukrainian agricultural class.

To some degree, the ignorance is due to a lack of information and a state-controlled cover-up: the artificially induced Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 was never acknowledged by the Soviet Union - although it admitted officially in the late 1980s that a famine of some sort had occurred - and therefore, it was not a subject covered in schools. In addition, until very recently few if any publications existed documenting the details.

Only in the last several years has some token effort been made by the Ukrainian government to research and document for posterity the facts of those years, and only since the beginning of this year's official commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the horrendous event has it put forward a serious proposal for construction of a proper memorial.

Today, after the Pulitzer Prize Committee has said that it will review the award it gave Mr. Duranty in 1931, it is notable that Ukrainian experts on the Soviet Union and the Stalinist era familiar with the persona of Walter Duranty generally condemn his work and hold the viewpoint that the Pulitzer Prize he was awarded for his reporting on the "successful" completion of the first Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union should be revoked even posthumously.

The Weekly contacted four such respected academics and experts on the Great Famine who reside in Ukraine: Dr. James Mace of the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy, Dr. Yurii Shapoval of the Institute of Political and Ethno-national Research, Dr. Stanislav Kulchytskyi, assistant director of the Institute of History of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and Arkadii Sydoruk, member of the board of directors of the Association of Famine Researchers.

Mr. Sydoruk said he was taken aback by how little is known about the Great Famine in general and Mr. Duranty's role in particular. He blamed it to some extent on the preponderance of history scholars in Ukraine who still hold and teach Soviet views.

"I bet that if you asked 100 journalists who Duranty was one would know," said Mr. Sydoruk of the degree to which the Soviet Union was successful in stifling any knowledge of what was certainly one of the top five man-made horrors of the 20th century. Mr. Sydoruk noted that he had only encountered one major study dealing directly with the Great Famine during research last year at the Vernadsky National Library in Kyiv.

The four scholars, with whom our Kyiv Bureau spoke separately, were of the opinion that Mr. Duranty had helped to cover up and perhaps deepen the effects of the Great Famine by failing to report on its existence.

Dr. Shapoval noted that the area in which the forced hunger occurred was home to 77 million people in the early 1930s, 10 percent of whom were starved to death and many of whom could have been saved if the Soviet regime had faced international pressure at least to abandon a policy of grain confiscation.

They also said that there should be no doubt that the Pulitzer Prize awarded to Mr. Duranty for his accounts of life in the Soviet Union published in The New York Times, should be revoked - even though the award was given for articles not directly related to the Great Famine.

"I don't understand even how he could have been awarded a prize for his reporting on the first Five-Year Plan [for economic development]. It was this Five-Year Plan that introduced collectivization. It was this policy that laid the groundwork for the famine," explained Mr. Sydoruk.

Dr. Mace pointed out that no one took the time to analyze and understand that, while Mr. Duranty had praised the merits of the first Five-Year Plan, it was a failure and only led to a drastic drop in living standards.

"Yes, he was inaccurate even in those reports," said Dr. Mace, who is considered the foremost global expert on the Great Famine and was the lead scholar on the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine established by the United States Congress in the 1980s. In 1988, as a result of the Famine commission's work, the U.S. Congress approved a resolution in which it verified that state-sponsored, artificially induced starvation had occurred in Ukraine in 1932-1933 as a result of which 7 million to 10 million people had perished. Today Dr. Mace resides in Kyiv, where he teaches at one of the country's most prestigious universities and consults on political matters for the Kyiv daily newspaper Den.

Dr. Mace noted that in 1931, when Mr. Duranty had traveled to Berlin to renew his passport at the U.S. Embassy there, he told the ambassador that in agreement with the management of the New York Times and the Soviet Union his stories should reflect the viewpoint of the Soviet government and not his own.

"At the time he was given the Pulitzer he was already an admitted spokesman for the Soviet Union," explained Dr. Mace.

Mr. Sydoruk said that few also realize that in his reports Mr. Duranty often plagiarized Bolshevik party documents. Mr. Sydoruk noted that the Soviet Union utilized Mr. Duranty to squelch rumors that were floating across the empire that indeed a Famine of mass proportions was occurring in the Ukrainian countryside.

"Duranty was quoted in the Soviet press to confirm that no famine was taking place," explained Mr. Sydoruk.

The four academics also were in agreement that the first traces of the Famine had appeared already with the poor harvest of 1931, which means that Duranty was aware of what was going on in the Ukrainian countryside.

Dr. Mace said he has long been certain that the Great Famine began in 1931 as a result of forced collectivization and the arrest of the most prosperous kurkuls (private farmers).

"If you look at the All-Ukrainian Party Conference of the summer of 1932, it is clear that people were already going hungry in 1931; that there was starvation," explained Dr. Mace. "It was not as generalized and was not as intensive, but it already existed."

Both Dr. Kulchytskyi and Dr. Shapoval said their individual research has indicated that up to 150,000 people had perished in the winter of 1931-1932 as a result of forced collectivization and arrests.

Dr. Shapoval explained that the deaths "were not due to bad harvests or improper collectivization," but because of policies that had horrific results.

Dr. Kulchytskyi said that the Famine turned into outright genocide after November 1932, when the government implemented a policy of grain appropriation to meet quotas that many farms would not or could not meet. He said that the daily death rate peaked in June-July 1933.

Dr. Shapoval, who is most noted for his extensive research in the KGB archives of Moscow and Kyiv and his books on the dirty deeds of the intelligence agency, said that it is not only desirable but imperative that Mr. Duranty's name be removed from the list of Pulitzer Prize winners

"It is needed for the memory of all those millions who perished, to show our respect for them. In Ukraine we cannot seem to find a way to do this," explained Dr. Shapoval, who added that it was a tragic shame that while the Great Famine is generally recognized in the West, it is virtually ignored in the country where it occurred.

"In the U.S. and other countries they are honored, memorials have been built, resolutions passed," Dr. Shapoval said.

Mr. Sydoruk, for his part, said he does not agree with those in the United States who have said it is too late to withdraw the Pulitzer given Mr. Duranty - in effect, a mind set that holds: what is done, is done and so be it.

"You can respect people who hold a point of view sincerely - John Reed [(a United States citizen who moved to Moscow after the Communist Revolu-tion, immortalized in the movie, 'Reds')] comes to mind," stated Mr. Sydoruk. "He was an honest, although misguided, Communist who believed in the cause. Duranty was not."

The head of the Association of Great Famine Researchers then added that it would be best if the Pulitzer Prize Committee would take the award it gave Mr. Duranty and give it to Gareth Jones, the British journalist who secretly traveled through Ukraine east of the Dnipro River in 1993 and reported in the British press on the horror he witnessed first-hand - reports that were not taken seriously at the time.

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