31 Facts About Walter Duranty

Walter Duranty was an Anglo-American journalist who served as Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times for fourteen years following the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War.

In 1932, Duranty received a Pulitzer Prize for a series of reports about the Soviet Union, eleven of which were published in June 1931.

Walter Duranty was later criticized for his subsequent denial of the widespread famine in the USSR, most particularly the Holodomor.

Walter Duranty was born in a middle-class Lancashire family to Emmeline and William Steel Walter Duranty.

Walter Duranty's grandparents had moved to Birkenhead, on the Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire, from the West Indies in 1842 and established a successful merchant business in which his father worked.

Walter Duranty studied at Harrow, one of Britain's most prestigious public schools, but a sudden collapse in the family business led to a transfer to Bedford School.

Walter Duranty became involved in a relationship with Crowley's mistress, Jane Cheron, and eventually married her.

Walter Duranty moved to Riga, Latvia, to cover events in the newly independent Baltic states.

Once he had recovered, Walter Duranty returned to the Soviet Union.

Walter Duranty claimed that they viewed individuality and private enterprise as alien concepts that led to social disruption and were just as unacceptable to them as tyranny and communism were unacceptable to the Western world.

Walter Duranty believed that Stalin scrapped the New Economic Policy because he had no political competition.

Walter Duranty argued that the Soviet Union's mentality in 1931 greatly differed from the perception created by the ideas of Karl Marx; he viewed Stalinism as an integration of Marxism with Leninism.

In one of his articles submitted for the Pulitzer Prize, Walter Duranty opines on the Soviet actions that led to the famine.

Walter Duranty sometimes claimed that individuals being sent to the labor camps in the Russian North, Siberia, or Kazakhstan were given a choice between rejoining Soviet society or becoming underprivileged outsiders.

Walter Duranty argued that the brutal collectivization campaign was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union that only history could judge.

Walter Duranty both admitted the Stalinist system's brutality and defended its necessity.

Walter Duranty's motivations have been hotly debated, and his reporting is faulted for being too uncritical of the USSR, presenting Soviet propaganda as legitimate reporting.

In 1933, Stalin rewarded this praise and appreciation by saying that Walter Duranty tried "to tell the truth about our country".

Under the title "Russians Hungry, But Not Starving", Walter Duranty's article described the situation as follows:.

Sally J Taylor, author of the critical Duranty biography Stalin's Apologist, argues that his reporting from the USSR was a key factor in US President Franklin D Roosevelt's 1933 decision to grant official recognition to the Soviet Union.

In 1934, Walter Duranty left Moscow and visited the White House in the company of Soviet officials, including Litvinov.

Walter Duranty continued as a Special Correspondent for The New York Times until 1940.

Walter Duranty wrote several books on the Soviet Union after 1940.

Walter Duranty's name was on a list maintained by writer George Orwell of those Orwell considered to be unsuitable as possible writers for the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department, owing to the possibility of them being too sympathetic to communism or possibly paid communist agents.

Walter Duranty reported when opinions were strongly divided on the Soviet Union and its leadership.

Walter Duranty has been criticized for deferring to Stalin and the Soviet Union's official propaganda rather than reporting news, both when he was living in Moscow and later.

Since the late 1960s, Walter Duranty's work has come increasingly under fire for failing to report the famine.

Robert Conquest was critical of Walter Duranty's reporting in The Great Terror, The Harvest of Sorrow and, most recently, in Reflections on a Ravaged Century.

Controversy and concern over Walter Duranty's reporting on the famine in Soviet Ukraine led to a move to posthumously and symbolically strip him of the Pulitzer Prize he received in 1932.

Four years earlier, in a 1986 New York Times review of Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow, former Moscow bureau reporter Craig Whitney wrote that Walter Duranty effectively ignored the famine until it was almost over.

Walter Duranty is portrayed by Peter Sarsgaard in the film Mr Jones.