The Ukranian Famine: Press Coverage (1932-33)

Figure 1.--

The Soviet press of course was completely controlled by Stalin and the NKVD. They consistently under reported the extent of the famine. And the blame the poor harvests on sabatoge by the reputed Kulaks. The increase in grain quotas were not mentioned. Subsequent Soviet coverage tended to deny the Ukranian focus. The Soviet reporting is of course thus easily understood, an effort to minimize the tragedy and to disaasociate Stalin from any responsibility. This is of course understanable. What is not understandabke is reporting in the western media. Of course the Soviet authorities could limit access by the Western media. Given the dimensions of the suffering and killing, however, they could not entirely prevent reports of the tragedy from leaking out to the West. What is difficult to understand is why the Western media, with only a few exceptions, seems to have cooperated with Soviet authorities in supressing news of the famine. Abnd this included many of the jost respected newspaper like the New York Times. One historian writes, "The failure of Western newspapers to do all that they could to inform their readers about conditions in Russia was never more apparent than during the Holodomor [starvations]. Although the home [Western] newspapers were aware of the travel restrictions placed on their correspondents at the start of 1933, there was no outcry from them. Moreover, while there were clues enough even before the travel ban that conditions were not satisfactory in the countryside and that there might be a food shortage, only the most conservative newspapers in the West gave the early reports of famine the attention they deserved. It was almost as if the Western press itself was willing to accept a role in the (genocide) famine cover-up. The role of the New York Times in the dismal press coverage of the Soviet Union seems to have been especially onerous. While the Times was (and is) widely regarded as one of the world's best newspapers, its reputation for accuracy and fairness was clearly not deserved in the case of its coverage of the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1933." [Crowl, p. 198.] A rare exception was British diplomat and journalist Gareth Jones who reported accurately on the famine. Many in the journalistic and acafemic community did not like to see critisms of Stalin and the Soviet Union. Articles 'debunking' Jones sion appeared in importanht papers. He was denounced as a liar by several Moscow resident Western journalists in their reporting. This included The New York Times' and incumbent 1932 Pulitzer Prize Winner, Walter Duranty. Eugene Lyons was another Western Moscow-ased correspondent who denounced Jones. He later repudiated his denunciation and aopologized 4 years later (1937). He apoologized, "Throwing down Jones was as unpleasant a chore as fell to any of us in years of juggling facts to please dictatorial regimes—but throw him down we did, unanimously and in almost identical formulas of equivocation. Poor Gareth Jones must have been the most surprised human being alive when the facts he so painstakingly garnered from our mouths were snowed under by our denials." [Lyons]

Sources

Crowl, James William. Anqels in Stalin's Paradise: Western Reporters in Soviet Russia, 1917 to 1937: A Case Study of Louis Fischer and Walter Duranty (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982).

Lyons, Eugene. Assignment in Utopia.

Created: 1:09 AM 7/14/2013
Last updated: 1:09 AM 7/14/2013