Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times's Man in Moscow (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A beautifully researched life of the high-living, cynical journalist who helped cover up Stalin's atrocities in the 1930s" --New York Times Book Review.

Product Description

Short, unattractive, hobbling about Stalin's Moscow on a wooden leg, Walter Duranty was an unlikely candidate for the world's most famous foreign correspondent. Yet for almost twenty years his articles filled the front page of The New York Times with gripping coverage of the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. A witty, engaging, impish character with a flamboyant life-style, he was a Pulitzer Prize winner, the individual most credited with helping to win U.S. recognition for the Soviet regime, and the reporter who had predicted the success of the Bolshevik state when all others claimed it was doomed. But, as S.J. Taylor reveals in this provocative biography, Walter Duranty played a key role in perpetrating some of the greatest lies history has ever known.

Stalin's Apologist deftly unfolds the story of this accomplished but sordid and tragic life. Drawing on sources ranging from newspapers to private letters and journals to interviews with such figures as William Shirer and W. Averell Harriman, Taylor's vivid narrative unveils a figure driven by ambition, whose early success reporting on Bolshevik Russia--he was foremost in predicting Stalin's rise to power--established his international reputation, fed his overconfident contempt for his colleagues, and indeed led him to identify with the Soviet dictator. Thus during the great Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s, which Stalin engineered to crush millions of peasants who resisted his policies, Duranty dismissed other correspondents' reports of mass starvation and, though secretly aware of the full scale of the horror, effectively reinforced the official cover-up of one of history's greatest man-made disasters. Later, he took the rigged show trials of Stalin's Great Purges at face value, blithely accepting the guilt of the victims. He believed himself the leading expert on the Soviet Union, and his faith in his own insight drew him into a downward spiral of distortions and untruths, typified by his memorable excuse for Stalin's crimes, "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."

Taylor brilliantly captures the full range of Duranty's astonishing life, from his participation in the Satanic orgies of Aleister ("the Beast") Crowley, to his dramatic front-line reporting during World War I, to his epic womanizing and heavy drug and alcohol abuse. It is the bitter, ironic story of a man who had the rare opportunity to bring to light the suffering of the millions of Stalin's victims, but remained a prisoner of vanity, self-indulgence, and success.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1st Edition. edition (March 29, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195057007
• ISBN-13: 978-0195057003
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #456,703 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Documented Story of Duranty's False Reporting, July 16, 2003

By	C. Trew "chekist" (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Today, even the New York Times itself no longer praises Duranty or the Pulitzer prize he received for his false reporting from Russia for the Times. The NYT website admits on it's Pulitzer page that his reporting has been debunked by various sources. The fact that the terror famine in Ukraine in the early 1930's wiped out millions is simply not in dispute by any serious researchers anymore. What has not received in depth coverage, until now, is the major role Duranty's reporting played in shielding this massive horror from the rest of the world.
The terror famine in Ukraine was one of the great crimes of the 20th century. Yet it has remained obscured behind other mass murders, such as the Nazi "Final Solution" and the "Killing Fields" of the Khmer Rouge. This book fully documents how this tragic omission from the mainstream historical record came to pass.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fake reports from the New York Times is nothing new, September 13, 2006

By	J. Adams "History buff" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Duranty was not just the "NY Times man in Moscow" but an opinion leader among the elite press in Soviet Russia during the establishment and consolidation of the "Evil Empire" into one of the most monstrous blights to ever infect humanity.
Taylor does a fantastic job of showing that Duranty not only assisted monsters like Stalin, but enabled him to commit a holocaust far bigger than Hitler's in his starvation of millions in the Ukraine,the imprisonment of millions in gulags which were death camps for millions more, and show trials that sent countless more to their deaths long before der Fuehrer showed up.
Duranty was a drunk, drug addict, and depraved sexual deviant who was as ugly inside as he was on the outside. He destroyed and dismissed honest reporters who attempted to alert the world to the evils of the Soviet Union, and lied through his teeth while reporting on Stalin's show trials that resulted in a police state that still holds the record for death and depravity.
And of course every time you see another NY Times reporter get another Pulitzer prize, you will find the one awarded to Duranty as proof that the rot at the Times goes back many, many decades. The Times has fought any attempt to take this award away, even though it was awarded for totally fictitious "reports" filed by Duranty.
Taylor does a great job with this book and it should be required reading for any journalism course on how a big newspaper does not necessarily make it a great newspaper.