1930s AD

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 22, 2003

As Harvard historian Richard Pipes wrote in his book Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, Duranty's stories stressing "Lenin's alleged adoption of Western economic models ... was very important for Moscow to convey at a time when it actively sought foreign credits."

An early supporter of Stalin, Duranty wrote for the Times until 1941and never wavered in his defense of the Soviet dictator, even defending horrendous atrocities such as the completely transparent show trials. A short, bald Englishman with a wooden leg, Duranty appears to have been handsomely rewarded by the Soviets for his loyalty. Taylor reports that his four-room Moscow apartment was stocked with vodka and caviar, and that he employed a chauffeur, a maid and a cook who became his mistress.

In 1953, after the death of Stalin, Duranty came briefly out of retirement to write a page-one obituary for the Orlando Morning Sentinel, in which he hailed Stalin for "lift[ing] himself and [his followers] to such heights of strength and influence as few mortals have ever known." His health declined steadily, and four years later he died from an internal hemorrhage complicated by pulmonary emphysema at the age of 73. "It was as if, with Stalin's death, Walter Duranty had nothing left to say," Taylor write.

And Sawkiw points to new evidence of a formal agreement that Duranty, and possibly the Times itself, had with the Soviet Union concerning news coverage. In his new book, U.S. Intelligence Perceptions of Soviet Power 1921-46, historian Leonard Leshuk, citing State Department memos, writes, "In June 1931, Duranty admitted to A.W. Kleiforth of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin that, 'in agreement with the New York Times and the Soviet authorities,' his official dispatches always reflect the official opinion of the Soviet regime and not his own." Sawkiw sees this as the smoking gun. "This proves his errors were errors of commission," the Ukraine scholar says. None of the articles on Duranty that the Times sent to Insight to make its case so much as noted this new evidence.

Radosh and other critics say that while the Times argues it is not returning the prize because it does not want to "undo history," the paper in fact is trying to cover up its own history of helping launch communist regimes that systematically oppress their people. Times correspondent Herbert Matthews was instrumental in Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba through dispatches calling the future communist dictator "the rebel leader of Cuba's youth" and asserting that "thousands of men and women are heart and soul with Fidel Castro." As former Times reporter John Corry recalled in his memoirs, My Times, "Castro's people in Havana obtained thousands of reprints of Matthews' articles and mailed them all over Havana. Perfectly ordinary Cubans who had not thought about Castro before read that he was now their new leader. ... [T]he White House and State Department listened."

When Corry wrote an article in which communists looked bad, he incurred the wrath of editors and prestige reporters. Corry recalls a 6,500-word piece he wrote in 1982 exposing a disinformation campaign launched by the communist government in Warsaw that claimed Polish emigre novelist Jerzy Kosinski was a CIA agent and didn't write his own books. The article produced angry reactions from veteran Times reporters David Halberstam and Harrison Salisbury. "How could you?!" Corry recalls Halberstam yelling at him.