Stalin's Apologist

Journalist Walter Duranty was a working-class English socialist, who acquired the graces of a socialite while stationed in Paris. Within months of Duranty arriving in Moscow as a correspondent for the "New York Times" the Romanovs were deposed, but he soon found himself installed as the reigning social host of the Western Colony. His newspaper career was equally glittering - his 1929 interview with Stalin won him the Pulitzer Prize and his articles played a prominent role in gaining American recognition for the USSR in 1933. However, the content of his despatches was becoming increasingly selective. He hushed up the Great Famine of the early 1930s and glossed over the infamous show trials, which led to his dismissal from the "Times" in the late 1930s. Sally Taylor's biography of this flamboyant individual also explores the source and content of the news the West received between the World Wars, and raises issues about the role of the Press in modern society.