Justice at last for critic of Stalinism? (Welsh paper vs New York Times Walter Duranty)

The Western Mail ^ | 6/12/03 | Tomos Livingstone

[DPB101]

AN infamous apologist for Stalinist Russia, who ridiculed a legendary Welsh journalist's claims that the regime was causing the starvation of millions of people, could be stripped of the Pulitzer Prize he won 70 years ago .

Any move to revoke the award won by Walter Duranty of the New York Times in 1932 would further vindicate Gareth Jones, who first exposed the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine in which millions died - an event Duranty denied had happened.

Campaigners have been bombarding the prize's committee with postcards and e-mails demanding Duranty, who died in 1957, be stripped of the prize, and a review is now reported to be under way.

When Jones, who wrote for The Western Mail, announced at a press conference in Berlin March 29, 1933 that millions were starving in Ukraine as a result of Stalin's five-year-plan, several foreign correspondents rushed to rubbish the story.

The most vocal was Walter Duranty of the New York Times, who had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his own reports on Stalin's Russia.

He dismissed Jones's eye-witness account as "a big scare story" and insisted there was "no actual starvation".

In May 1932 the New York Times printed Mr Jones's response to the controversy. In a furious attack on the coterie of foreign correspondents, Mr Jones congratulated "the Soviet Foreign Office on its skill in concealing the true situation in the USSR."

Now a campaign organised by Ukrainians worldwide is putting pressure on the board of the Pulitzer Prize to reconsider Duranty's award.

The campaign has been given added momentum by the present-day problems at the New York Times, where the editor and managing editor have been forced to resign over a scandal involving 27-year-old reporter Jayson Blair, who has admitted fabricating dozens of articles for the paper.

The 18-member board which decides the awards, one of the most prestigious in world journalism, is now conducting a secret review of Duranty's award.

Gareth Jones, who was born in Barry in 1905, was regarded as one of the most talented journalists of his generation.

He wrote for The Western Mail, The Times and The Manchester Guardian as well as the Berliner Tageblatt and American newspapers.

He travelled through Russia and Ukraine in the early 1930s and was shocked at the famine conditions he encountered.

An estimated seven to 10 million people died between 1932 and 1933, an event Ukrainians call the Holodomor.

His career survived the controversy over the Ukrainian reports, but his life was tragically cut short when he was murdered by bandits in 1935 while travelling in Inner Mongolia. He was just 29 years old.

Mr Jones's niece Dr Siriol Colley has written a book about her uncle's life, A Manchukuo Incident.

She has been inundated with calls and e-mails from Ukrainian campaign groups keen to set the record straight on what they regard as their biggest national disaster.

She said, "Gareth was a man of integrity. He wanted to promote the fact that Stalin, and his five-year plan, was going badly wrong.

"The revoking of the award is a token and acknowledgement of the terrible famine - the Holodomor - which the world had no idea about - the facts which were suppressed by Stalin, his cohorts and Duranty was the medium to misinform the world press."

Her son Nigel Colley has suggested Gareth Jones should be posthumously awarded the prize.

One of the campaigners for the revocation of the prize is Dr Natalia Pylypiuk , an academic based in Edmonton, Canada.

Her mother, Anna Wlasenko, 12-years-old in 1933, survived the famine, despite being assumed dead and thrown into a mass grave.

In her letter to the Pulitzer committee she wrote, "As my family sits down in October to celebrate her 82nd birthday and to commemorate all those grandparents, uncles, and aunts who did not survive 1933, there could be no greater gift than being able to announce that, finally, Mr Duranty's unworthiness has been acknowledged by the Pulitzer committee."

Writing about Duranty in the 1970s, Guardian correspondent Malcolm Muggeridge, who also reported on the famine - anonymously - at the same time as Jones, said, "He admired Stalin and the regime precisely because they were so strong and ruthless. 'I put my money on Stalin' was one of his favourite sayings."

The Pulitzer board has only ever revoked a prize once, in 1981. Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke's story of an eight-year-old ghetto boy already addicted to heroin was revealed to be a fabrication.

[Grampa Dave]

Fascinating reading!

[HISSKGB]

The NYT celebrated the leadership of 'Uncle' Joe Stalin. That is quite fitting with their sympathies.

DBD101: Emma Goldman's legacy is still being revered by the NYT's types who wont be satisfied until all American values are destroyed.

Just last year the Times pushed a front page boost for the radical son of members of the murderous, bombing Weather Underground. This group went on a crime spree with the Black Liberation thugs.

[HISSKGB]

In August of 2001 the NYT wrote an affectionate piece about Kamp Kinderland, a recommended Stalinist/Leninist summer camp for children.

[HISSKGB]

Can anyone believe this!

Adam Liptak of the NYT is currently attacking Republican Ashcroft by equating Ashcroft's actions against illegal aliens with that of the former Atty. General Palmer. Liptak conveniently forgets to mention that Palmer rounded up and exported dangerous criminal aliens who had been busy in this country with bombings and assassinations.

The NYT and its companion the ACLU has been sniveling and wailing for many decades because alien felons like Emma Goldman and her fellow assassins/bombers were kicked out of this country by Attorney General Palmer.

[dix]

You are such a great resource to me for this subject that I am so interested in. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you sending these articles to me.

When our side is wrong, I think we usually fess up, but those bastards on the other side just dare not admit it.

How many people died because of communism in the 20th, century compared to the other unspeakable ideologies?

[DPB101]

Hey Dix! Glad to see you back! You asked me to flag your a while back and I almost didn't because you seem to have taken a break from FR or (I thought) were not interested.

Found a few goodies which might interest you. 99.9% of what you find on the net about the "Palmer Raids" is negative. But the roundups of "Reds" were very popular at the time. The following two sites show why. Important to read them in their entirety (they are not long and are fast loading) to see why most Americans agreed in 1920 certain people should be loaded on ships and sent back to Russia:

1997 Senate Report (note that Reed was paid over one million dollars for writing "Ten Days Which Shook the World"--an astronomical sum 80 plus years ago.)

Fear of Dissent--forget the BS intro. Scroll down to what U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer said. He knew. They bombed his house.

[nopardons]

Thanks for the links.

In the 1920s, Americans had already suffered through all sorts of Commie/anarchist plots, subplots, bombing, etc. Don't forget about Emma, the RED MENNACE , Goldman, nor Sacco & Venzetti.(sp?)

[DPB101]

Grrr....Sacco-Vanzetti was what led us to OJ and the criminal as victim.

It was a nothing case. A murderer, Sacco, with an idiot accomplice, Vanzetti.Normally, Sacco would have fried and Vanzetti gotten off. But the Kremlin became involved. Fred Moore, a coke-head and CPUSA lover, began the ball rolling. Willi Munzenberg, a Soviet agent, jumped on the cause. What was a simple murder case became the fascist USA putting two poor immigrants on trial for murder because Americans hated immigrants, free speech, the rule of law and the constitution.

The biggest dupes were Marion and Felix Frankfurter. Soviet operative Gardner Jackson conned Marion into getting her husband to write an analysis of the case which was published in The Atlantic. Trotsky, Kamenev, Radek, Zinoviev and Stalin were delighted. They had Felix's attack on the American legal system published all over the world.

Poor Sacco and Vanzetti. What they never knew is that their defenders wanted them fried in the electric chair.

[NormsRevenge]

Thanks for the links and the info.

This is the kind of revisionist historical effort one can support readily.

[HISSKGB]

The Palmer Raids were a much needed response to the many bombings and assassinations being committed in the US by Red aliens.

To commemorate the Soviet May Day, there were 36 bombs set to blow in the US on May 1, 1919. In June of that same year bombs were exploded in eight different cities by the Red aliens. These cities included Pittsburgh, Philly, Washington,DC, Boston , Atlanta and Neutonsville,Mass. The targets were judges, political officials and others perceived as enemies by the Reds. Many were killed when a Red bomb exploded on Wall Street in 1920.

The New York Times and its sister organization, the ACLU, persist in defending these Red aliens and continue to attack the government for trying to protect citizens.

[Gareth_Jones_Archives]

As relatives of Gareth Jones, we are very grateful for the recognition, which he is belatedly recieved from Ukrainian communities, as it was Gareth who stood up to the full might Soviet propaganda machine directly after his famine exposure. This includes Duranty's denials, but one should remember that he was not alone amongst Western journalists based in Moscow, who were complicit in the famine cover-up (See Eugene Lyons - Asssigment in Eutopia, 1937 on Gareth's commerative website).

Gareth, for his truthful reporting was not unsurprisingly, personally banned soon thereafter, from ever visting the Soviet Union by Foreign Commissar, Litvinov, by special cable.

Tragically, Gareth was kidnapped and murdered in Munchukuo by politically-contolled bandits just two years later in 1935, whilst investigating Japanese terratorial expansion of North China.

There is circumstantial evidence that the OGPU, through the Richard Sorge spy ring were involved, but more likely the Japanese knew what he had exposed in the Soviet Union, and feared he would do the same to them in Manchuria.

If it were not for the current Duranty Pulitzer Revocation Campaign, then Gareth's role would have remained entirely unnoticed, as unfortunatekly Malcolm Muggeridge, after Gareth's death, never wish to share any of the recognition for Gareth's part, in this journalistic 'scoop'.

And for this recognition, we, as gareth Jones' relatives, thank you sincerely...

Yours faithfully.


Nigel Colley
(Great nephew of Gareth Jones)
Website: http://colley.co.uk/garethjones

P.S. Please feel free to discover all of Gareth's Soviet Newspaper Articles from 1930 -1933, plus extensive background information relating to his exposure of the Holodomor and resulting Soviet Propaganda he stood up alone and rebutted at: http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/soviet_articles.htm

[DPB101]

Thank you for the wonderful website and archive. It was a delight to find.A must read for anyone interested in the era. I was astounded not only at the quality of your uncle's work but how prolific he was. What a tragedy we were deprived of him at such a young age. Events might have been far different, and for the better, had he lived. There were so very few with the courage to tell the truth.

I look forward to reading your book, Gareth Jones: A Manchukuo Incident.

It must be wonderful for your family that your great uncle is finally getting the worldwide attention he so richly deserves. Please do keep us informed

Best regards and welcome to Free Republic.

[Fracas]

You are modestly failing to take credit for your efforts w/r/t the Duranty situation. You've done great work on this topic and many of us are grateful.

Thanks for the PING and info. I'm forwarding a lot of this to non-Freepers, too.

Who's the next target?

[AnnaZ]

Here's the NY Times fawning obituary of ol' Uncle Joe.

Unbelievable. It is without exaggeration that I say I had to stop reading it due to the onset of nausea.

[nopardons]

Many thanks for the ping, as well as the superb work you've done, in such a short span of tijme, on FR !

[nopardons]

Welcome to FR and thanks for your insightful and historical information and the link. It is far past due, that the lies, once espoused and trumpted, be exposed to one and all.

[DPB101]

“I brought myself down. … I gave them a sword and they stuck it in and they twisted it with relish.” —Richard Nixon Arthur O. Sulzberg. Publisher, New York Times.

[nopardons]

You're amazing ! LOL

Your tagline is ghastly. True quote, you unearthed ?

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for making what your Great Uncle stood for, available for the world to see.

You are a great resource for Free Republic and the world.

[Grampa Dave]

You have done an outstanding job with your efforts on Free Republic re the Duranty fiasco.

Thanks for all of your hard work, posts, replies and pings.