Skip to content
Call Us Today! 212-533-4646 | MON-FRI 12PM - 4PM (EST)
DONATE
SUBSCRIBE
Search for:
About Us
Publications
FAQ
Annual Report 2023
Annual Report 2022
Annual Report 2021
Initiatives
Advocate
Educate
Cultivate
Care
News
Newsletters
Sign Up For Our Newsletter
Join UNWLA
Become a Member
Volunteer With Us
Donate to UNWLA
Members Portal
Calendar
Shop to Support Ukraine
Search for:
Print
Print Page
Download
Download Page
Download Right Page
Open
1
2-3
4-5
6-7
8-9
10-11
12-13
14-15
16-17
18-19
20-21
22-23
24-25
26-27
28-29
30-31
32-33
34-35
36-37
38-39
40
Our Life | Наше життя November | Листопад 2020 The UNWLA is a strong advocate for furthering awareness of the Holodomor. In fact, it was one of the first organizations to inform the world about the Ukrainian horrors in 1933, and it continues to support educational programs, exhibits, and lec - tures, working closely with the U.S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness. The Committee is comprised of members from across the US who meet monthly via Zoom to coordinate a varied list of ambitious projects, such as state proclamations, educational presentations to the National Council for the Social Studies, Holodomor art exhibits, and the revocation of Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize. My main focus these past few years has been on the latter project – a Herculean effort to revoke Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize. Walter Duranty was the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times from 1922 to 1936. He wrote a series of articles in 1931 praising Joseph Stalin’s collectivization plans for his Soviet empire, and in turn received a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for journal- ism “of the highest caliber.” A document called the A. W. Kliefoth Memorandum, penned by a member of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, stated that, “in agreement with The New York Times and the Soviet authorities, Walter Duranty’s dispatch- es always reflect the official opinion of the Soviet regime and not his own.” This “smoking gun” document, never revealed by the Times, should have been the reason for not giving Duranty the Pulitzer. Duranty continued to write his dispatch- es in 1932–1933, when the Holodomor was rag- ing, always denying other journalists’ accounts of the horrendous famine. Publicly, he wrote, “any report of a famine is today an exaggeration or ma- lignant propaganda.” In private conversations, he admitted that as many as 10 million had probably been killed by Stalin. Since the 1990s there have been several campaigns to revoke Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer. The most significant one, led by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America in 2003, culminated in a report by Columbia University Professor Mark Von Hagen harshly criticizing Duranty’s meritless dispatches, calling them a “dull and largely un- critical recitation of Soviet sources.” The Pulitzer Committee responded to the report by saying that it presented insufficient grounds for setting a prec - edent and removing the prize, with disingenuous empathetic comments. Our Committee’s request in 2018 for a meeting with the Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes was dismissed with a repetition of their 2003 state - ment. With the recent release of the film Mr. Jones, our sub-committee – energized by the strong support of movie critics who invariably asked, “Why has the Pulitzer not been revoked?” – has initiated a new round of efforts in this initiative. Past endeavors engaged our Ukrainian diaspora; now, with this excellent film telling the story of Gareth Jones, the heroic young journalist who traveled to Ukraine and reported on the famine, we have the attention of non-Ukrainians, and we want to leverage that. It is critical for us to bring awareness of Duranty’s falsifications and the collaboration of the Times and the Pulitzer Committee to a wide audience. Our main objective will be to bring shame on these Oksana Piaseckyj , Chair, Sub-Committee on Duranty Revocation U.S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness Branch 17 Educational Cultural Liaison DURANTY’S PULITZER PRIZE Working to Revoke 16
Page load link
Go to Top
1 
2-3 
4-5 
6-7 
8-9 
10-11 
12-13 
14-15 
16-17 
18-19 
20-21 
22-23 
24-25 
26-27 
28-29 
30-31 
32-33 
34-35 
36-37 
38-39 
40 
