THE 70th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FAMINE-GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE

FOR THE RECORD: von Hagen's letter in Times

Below is Prof. Mark von Hagen's October 29 letter to the editor of The New York Times as published in that newspaper on November 13 under the headline "Walter Duranty's Pulitzer." (Last week's Weekly published the full text of the original letter Prof. von Hagen sent to the Times.)

To the Editor:

Regarding Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s suggestion to the Pulitzer Prize Board that revoking Walter Duranty's 1932 prize recalled the "Stalinist practice to airbrush purged figures out of official records and histories" ("Times Should Lose Pulitzer From 30s, Consultant Says," news article, October 29):

Those targeted for "airbrushing" were already murdered, languishing in the gulag or forced into exile after having been falsely accused of espionage, treason, sabotage and other "crimes."

The NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB, then ordered libraries to expunge all mention and to relegate them to the status of non-persons, a fate that persisted for most until the Gorbachev era.

Revoking Mr. Duranty's prize is another matter altogether. He was never prosecuted for any crimes. His articles remain available in the archives of The New York Times, and his books on the shelves of major libraries.

Airbrushing was intended to suppress the truth about what was happening under Stalin. The aim of revoking Walter Duranty's prize is the opposite: to bring greater awareness of the potential long-term damage that his reporting did for our understanding of the Soviet Union.

Mark von Hagen
New York, October 29, 2003

The writer, a professor of history at Columbia University, was hired by The New York Times to make an independent assessment of Walter Duranty's reporting.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, November 23, 2003, No. 47, Vol. LXXI

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