NEWS AND VIEWS: Luciuk takes on The Times, and doesn't give up the fight (08/01/04)

NEWS AND VIEWS

Luciuk takes on The Times, and doesn't give up the fight

by Ian Hunter

Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, a professor at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, is a determined man. The son of Ukrainian immigrants, Dr. Luciuk discovered an injustice done to Ukrainians and he decided to rectify it.

The injustice was the awarding of the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for journalism to The New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty. Duranty had long since been exposed as "Stalin's apologist" (the title Susan Taylor chose for Duranty's biography), but his former employer, The New York Times, for decades has stubbornly refused to acknowledge this fact - as has the Pulitzer Prize Committee.

So Dr. Luciuk devised a devilishly simple plan: in May 2003 he launched a postcard crusade intended to flood the Pulitzer Prize Committee with demands that even now, half a century late, the committee do what it should have done long ago: revoke Duranty's Prize.

Was the campaign a success? Well, the postcards came in by the thousands. The New York Times was moved to commission a Columbia University historian, Mark von Hagen, to investigate Duranty's reporting. Prof. von Hagen concluded that it was "uncritical[and] a disservice to the American readers of the New York Times." Even Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger was compelled to acknowledge that Duranty's reporting was "slovenly." Nevertheless, the Pulitzer Committee kept its head buried in the sand and in May refused to revoke Duranty's prize. And there the campaign appeared to end, a seeming failure.

But Dr. Luciuk does not give up.

He has now published a fascinating book, "Not Worthy: Walter Duranty's Prize and The New York Times" (Kashtan Press, 2004). Dr. Luciuk's book not only chronicles the postcard campaign but provides overwhelming evidence, never before assembled in one place, of just what a liar Duranty was.

The Pulitzer Committee has decided to keep Duranty within its ranks; fair enough, it's their prerogative but, by doing so, as "Not Worthy" demonstrates, they debase not only themselves but all recipients.

Walter Duranty was The New York Times correspondent in Russia from 1921 until 1934. His dispatches were regarded as authoritative, so much so that they helped shape U.S. foreign policy. Duranty's biographer, Ms. Taylor, has demonstrated that Duranty's reporting was a critical factor in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1933 decision to grant official recognition to the Soviet Union.

Yet Duranty - this unattractive, oversexed little man, with a wooden leg, a reporter who seemed to take direction from the Kremlin - falsified facts, spread lies and half-truths, invented occurrences that never happened, and turned a blind eye to the man-made famine of 1932-1933 that starved to death more than 10 million people (according to an International Commission of Jurists which examined this tragedy in the late 1980s). When snippets of the truth began to leak out, Duranty coined the phrase: "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs." This phrase, or a variant thereof, has since proved useful to a rich variety of ideologues who contend that a worthy end justifies any means. Yet when the Pulitzer Committee originally conferred its prize on Duranty, it cited his "scholarship, profundity, impartiality, sound judgment and exceptional clarity." The committee may have backed off such praise today, but Duranty's prize remains.

Lest I be accused of the kind of journalistic conflict of interest that never fazed Duranty, let me record that Dr. Luciuk's book contains a contribution from me, one among many contributers.

The most chilling evidence in Dr. Luciuk's book is this: Duranty was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 1932. The man-made famine that ravaged Ukraine began in the fall of 1932 and reached its apogee in the winter of 1933. Having denied in his dispatches the existence of any famine throughout that period, and having publicly ridiculed those few brave reporters (notably Malcolm Muggeridge and Gareth Jones) who did attempt to alert the world, Duranty attended a dinner at the British Embassy on September 26, 1933, and there told William Strang, the Embassy's chargé d'affaires, that probably as many as 10 million people had died of starvation. Privately, Duranty told Muggeridge the same thing, this time adding (characteristically): "But they're only Russians."

Dr. Luciuk's battle against the Pulitzer Committee and The New York Times may appear to be a quixotic David-and-Goliath struggle. But, history is patient, and truth has a way of winning out. My money is on David.

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