Steven Langdon retweetledi
Walter Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for systematically lying about the Ukrainian famine while 7 million people starved to death under Stalin's forced collectivization. The New York Times correspondent knew exactly what he was doing when he filed reports describing "shortages" and "food difficulties" instead of the mass starvation unfolding before his eyes.
Duranty's articles praised Soviet agricultural policy even as entire villages disappeared. He wrote glowing accounts of collective farms while peasants ate bark and grass. When other journalists reported the truth about the Holodomor, Duranty dismissed their accounts as "malignant propaganda" and assured American readers that Stalin's five-year plan was working brilliantly. The Times promoted his coverage on the front page throughout 1932.
Duranty lived in Moscow, traveled through Ukraine, and witnessed the consequences of central planning firsthand. He chose to cover for Stalin because he believed the Soviet experiment represented humanity's future. Like many Western intellectuals of his era, he convinced himself that millions of deaths were acceptable collateral damage for building socialism. The Pulitzer committee rewarded him for this moral bankruptcy.
The Holodomor perfectly illustrates what happens when states control food production and distribution. Stalin confiscated grain to feed cities and export abroad while rural Ukraine descended into cannibalism. Free market economists had predicted exactly this outcome when central planners replaced price signals with bureaucratic decree.
The Times has never recinded Duranty's Pulitzer Prize.
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