Posted on 06/12/2003 8:04:30 AM PDT by 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.
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
A fitting Sultzburg legacy . . .
The sooner the Pulitzer is withdrawn, the sooner the rehabilitation of a corrupted media can begin.
I never thought we would see this either. The Ukrainian Weekly (a tiny paper in NJ) called the Pulitzer committee the end of May and asked if Duranty's Pulitzer was under investigation. Their article was posted on FR June 1st. Worldnetdaily and Newsmax soon followed up. Then the New York Sun and last night the AP carried the story. Went international last night.
All of this was prompted by Ukrainian groups noting the 70th anniversary of the genocide.
Harold Denny, who succeeded Duranty in the Times Moscow bureau, should be next on the hit list. Then there is Herbert Matthews and his dispatches from Cuba...then Anthony Lewis and Sydney Schanberg for their support of Pol Pot... then....then....
Anyone know if The Nation has apologized for its reporting on the Holodomor? Louis Fischer was even worse than Duranty.
Strictly speaking, this is not accurate. Janet Cooke voluntarily returned her Pulitzer after admitting her fraud, though her prize almost certainly would have been revoked had she not done so.
If you feel that Duranty did not deserve to keep his 1932 Pulitzer Prize and you wish to add your voice to this protest campaign then PRESS HERE, complete the email form that appears and submit it online to the Pulitzer Prize Committee in New York.
Seems right to me.
Actually, the plan worked as intended.
As for the Pulitzer "prize" - the only value the name has is Lili's fashion house.
Believers tend to die-off. Relatives of the killed tend never to forget.
The site has a page devoted to Goldman for Middle and High School students. She is, of course, portrayed as a heroine.
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