Executive Summary
The Commission has found no evidence that this knowledge played any role in the decision to normalize relations with the Soviet Union.
18) During the Famine certain members of the American press corps cooperated
with the Soviet government to deny the existence of the Ukrainian Famine. 98
The Soviet authorities denied that there was a famine when it was taking place, refused all offers of private aid. In May 1933 when at the Famine’s height, the London Daily Express reported that the Soviet government had purchased 15,000 tons of wheat in order to alleviate the shortage of bread, Pravda published an indignant denial. 99 In the late Summer of 1933, French Premier Edouard Herriot was treated to a Potemkin village tour of the Soviet Union which seems to have left him quite convinced that there was no
famine. 100
As for the Western press corps, the central figure in concealing the famine was Walter Duranty, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his dispatches from Moscow. At the height of the Famine, he attacked an account by British journalist Gareth Jones in an article with the self-explanatory title, “Russians Hungry but not Starving.” 101 A few months later Duranty told British diplomats confidentially that he thought it quite possible that as many “as ten million people may have died directly or indirectly because of lack of food in the Soviet Union during the past year.” 102
As early as 1931 an American diplomat in Berlin reported that Duranty told him, “That, ‘in agreement with the New York Times and the Soviet authorities,’ his official dispatches always reflect the official opinion of the Soviet government and not his own.” 103 Such an admission must be viewed as a damning indictment of Duranty’s professional integrity as a journalist and largely explains his role in spiking the story of the Famine.
19) Recently, scholarship in both the West and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union
has made substantial progress in dealing with the Famine. Although official Soviet
historians and spokesmen have never given a fully accurate or adequate account,
significant progress has been made in recent months. 104
Significant Western scholarship has appeared on the Ukrainian Famine. Especially noteworthy in this regard are Robert Conquest’s Harvest of Sorrow and
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98 See chapter six below.
99 Pravda, May 27, 1933.
100 Ewald Ammende, Human Life in Russia, pp. 223-257; (Yurko Stcpovyi), “Herriot’s Film
Studio’, ” The Black Deeds of the Kremlin, II, pp. 696-698.
101 New York Times, March 31,1933.
102 William Strang, British Embassy, Moscow, to Sir John Simon, September 30,1933; Archive No 8-F07182A4/38; Public Records Office; London. I am indebted to the Ukrainian Famine Research Committee of Toronto for this reference.
103 A. W. Kliefoth, US Embassy, Berlin, “Memorandum, June 4, 1931,” p. 2; 861.5017 Living Conditions/268; T1249; Records of the Department of State, NA.
104 See chapters one and two below.