Walter Duranty - Scholarship On Duranty's Work

Scholarship On Duranty's Work

Duranty's was reporting at a time when opinions were strongly divided on the Soviet Union and its leadership. Their participation in the League of Nations was viewed optimistically by some. Others saw an inevitable confrontation between Fascism and Communism as requiring individuals to take one side or the other. Even into World War II, Joseph E. Davies, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1936–38), represented positively both "Russia and its people in their gallant struggle to preserve the peace until ruthless aggression made war inevitable" and Stalin as a "decent and clean-living" man and "a great leader."

Many reporters of Duranty's time slanted their coverage in favour for the Soviet Union, either because the capitalist world was sinking under the weight of the Great Depression, out of a true belief in Communism or out of fear of being expelled from Moscow, which would result in the loss of livelihood. Also, many editors found it hard to believe a state would deliberately starve millions of its own people. However, even with this to consider, Duranty's reports were the source of much frustration from The Times readers in 1932, as his reports directly contradicted the paper's own editorial page.

While Duranty has been criticized generally for deferring to Stalin and the Soviet Union's official propaganda rather than reporting news, the major controversy regarding his work is his reporting on the great famine of 1932–33. Since the 1970s, Duranty's work has come under increasingly harsh fire for reporting there was no famine, even while it was clear from his personal exchanges that he was fully aware of the scale of the calamity.

• Robert Conquest has written several books, starting in the 1970s—including The Great Terror and Harvest of Sorrow and most recently Reflections on a Ravaged Century (1990)—critical of Duranty's reporting.
• Such political commentators as Joseph Alsop and Andrew Stuttaford have criticized Duranty. Alsop said, "Lying was Duranty's stock in trade."
• British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge called Duranty "the greatest liar I ever knew."
• American engineer Zara Witkin, who worked in the USSR from 1932 to 1934, and British intelligence have shown that Duranty knowingly misrepresented the famine.

Duranty has also been retroactively criticized for defending Stalin's notorious Moscow Trials of 1938 to eliminate potential challengers to his authority.

Duranty's biographer, S. J. Taylor ("Stalin's Apologist," Oxford University Press, 1990) argues that Duranty's reporting was a critical factor in U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1933 decision to grant official recognition to the Soviet Union.