by Mike
If you have never heard the term “useful idiot” it was the attitude held by Vladimir Lenin towards communist sympathizers in the West. While Lenin and the Soviets held them in utter contempt they also viewed them as tools for dispensing communist propaganda to other countries, thus infecting foreign cultures with their totalitarian tripe. After their mission was complete, they were no longer “useful.”
From the New Criterion.
Tim Tzouliadis’s The Forsaken tells of thousands of American socialists and Communists who moved to the Soviet Union in the thirties to find work and a workers’ paradise. They were quickly disappointed. Adam Hothschild reviews the book in the London Times (TNC subscribers can read Stephen Schwarz’s review from the September 2008 issue here):
From Alexander Solzhenitsyn and other Russians who have borne witness, we know about the midnight arrests, the interrogations and forced confessions, the trains hauling packed boxcars of emaciated prisoners to the labour camps scattered across the Arctic, Siberia, Kazakhstan and elsewhere. Tzouliadis traces the story of the Americans who got caught up in this madness through a wide range of letters and documents, and the published memoirs of two men who played on American baseball teams in Moscow in the mid-1930s, Victor Herman and Thomas Sgovio. Unlike many of their fellow players, whom they occasionally encountered in the gulag, they survived their imprisonment: Herman in central Russia and Sgovio in Kolyma. No one knows how many of the American immigrants were caught up by the Purge and perished either in execution cellars or in the camps, although one mass grave with more than 140 American bodies was found in 1997 near the Finnish border. Tzouliadis does not try to estimate the total American dead. My own guess would be that the figure is in the thousands; if we add victims among Britons and other Westerners living in USSR at the time, the total would be in the tens of thousands.
The list of useful idiots in the West is long but not very distinguished: Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, author and playwright, Lillian Hellman, noted author, Ernest Hemingway, and many more.
However one of the more prominent, but ironically less known, members of the “League of Useful Idiots” was correspondent, Moscow bureau chief of the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize winner, and Stalin apologist, Walter Duranty.
Duranty had a psychology which not influenced his writings but set him apart from other journalists of the day.
From the first there are certain facets of his character that differentiated him from his peers. He was imaginative and elitist, he would deliberately adopt the view of the minority on various issues, his stories would be embellished and appear more literary in form than
straight reporting. Taylor notes that he acquired initial fame with an “imagine you are there” story about the Paris Peace conference at
the end of the First World War.
What makes Walter Duranty so circumspect was not only his sympathetic view of Stalin but his under reporting on the Ukrainian famine of 1932.
Breaking Eggs and Peasants
Duranty continually described Stalin as a man who “could not make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” This was in reference to Uncle Joe’s first Five Year Plan in which Russia moved towards industrialization and agro-collectivism. While the industry rebuild was very successful the forced state ownership Soviet agriculture and peasant manned farming co-ops was a caustic reality for some in the communist state. In 1932 a famine swept across the Russian province of Ukraine in which upwards of 10 million Russians perished from starvation and malnutrition. Scholarly debate still ranges on the exact cause of the 1932 Ukrainian famine–also known as Holodomor or Hunger-Plague–but wildly held logic is the agro-economic “reforms” enacted were directly responsible. Although other theories assert that it was in direct response from the Soviet government to punish Ukraine for its growing nationalism.
Holodomor Never Happened
For six decades the Soviet Union continued to deny that the Ukrainian genocide even took place. It was not until peristokia, in the early nineties, did the Soviets finally reach full disclosure admitting the Famine actually took place and the numbers that died. Nevertheless, in the early 30′s, while the Famine was ongoing, Walter Duranty traveled the Russian countryside witnessing these atrocities first hand. Despite the realities of human suffering, Duranty continued currying Stalin’s favor by severely under reporting the carnage to the West. Thus making himself and the Times willing accomplices and complicit in the murders of millions innocent Ukrainians.
In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt officially recognized the legitimacy of Stalin’s murderous regime thanks in part to Duranty’s air-brushing of Stalin and the events which took place in Russia.
Pulitzer Controversy
Under protest by Ukrainian advocacy groups, in 2003 the New York Times reviewed Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize which he received for 13 articles he penned in 1931. Not so astoundingly, the Times and Pulitzer Prize Board lived up to their Liberal reputation. Deciding not to revoke Duranty’s Pulitzer citing that a Pulitzer is “awarded not for the author’s body of work or for the author’s character but for the specific pieces entered in the competition.”
I am sure that if Walter Duranty had outlived his usefulness to Stalin and was one of the Western useful idiots caught up in the Great Purge we would still be hearing and unending diatribe from the Times about his tireless contributions to humanity. Since that is not the case, the Times lives with the knowledge they assisted Stalin, through Duranty, in the murder of millions of innocents.
Not that it matters since you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few million eggs, even if those eggs are human beings.
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Mike, you know who else made his pilgrimage to the workers paradise? Lee H. Oswald. But, of course, he came back to the U.S. unlike the other idiots who were unable to.
I know its a bit late to add this but great post by the way.
Nice to see this being discussed on the web; I’m currently writing my thesis on the image of Russia in Britain in the 1930s, and come across quite a bunch of “useful idiots” there also. The big ones are George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and many more. Sadly, most people who were “useful idiots” for Russia weren’t entirely to blame for making false assumptions, but people like Duranty and Shaw do not stand up well in the light of history, and I’m glad to see people remembering this.
I remembered the Pulitzer controversy a few years ago, but I had never heard of Duranty before that. Upon reading about Holodomor it brought me around to him. I was absolutely stunned when I read what he wrote about Stalin and was even more surprised when I found out he actually lived in Russia during the time of his reporting on the events there.
Needless to say Duranty, in my opinion, was scum and his attitude is much like the ones we see today.
I am doing the image of Soviet Russia in the US in 1920s. Then there were also the whole bunch of lady-idiots or semi-idiots – Clare Sheridan, Marguerite Harrison, Anna Loise Strong and others, although Emma Golman got cured from her sympathy to the Soviet experiment very quickly
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Now we can add Barack Obama to the list of “most useful idiots”.
Good point, Tater. Oh yeah, Tot says, “Hi.”
to john thames:
apparently “winter in moscow” has both edited and unedited versions. can you be more specific about the unedited one? thank you.
to john thames:
i guess i’m to look for the eyre & spottiswoode 1934 edition, and not the eerdman’s publishing co. 1987 edition.
secondhand editions seem pricey at upwards of USD50.
Those interested in how Operation Iraqi Freedom was pitched by the Israel-firsters, should read “The Transparent Cabal” by Stephen Sniegoski. The same players seem to be readying the public for action in Iran.
http://bit.ly/cCIC2z
Torture in Uzbekistan under Karimov was viewed benignly by the neo-cons as he was well-disposed towards Israel and the Uzbek Jewish community.
To:
John Thames,
BTW,
The Polish people who participated in the Jedwabne pogrom were forced to do so by the German soldiers who were the real propagators of the crime.
The books of J.Gross are grossly(!) misleading and false. Many historians have commented on the poor quality of his research for the books, such as unreliable sources, ignoring German documents which proved Germans initiated and carried on the pogrom, ignoring ( still alive) witnesses who were not to his taste while quoting witnesses who were not even in Jedwabne during the pogrom, putting the number of victims at ~1600 while the estimated Jewish population of the village was ~500, and many other such “errors” and omissions.
John, appreciate the added info. Have you turned this comment section into your own personal blog? haha.
there is much of interest to those who subscribe to mr. john thames’ line of reasoning in michael collins piper’s final judgement. lee harvey oswald was indeed a useful idiot, but not for the soviets.
http://is.gd/ksHg8
John Thames,
Just an FYI. Once this comment thread reaches one hundred posts, she will be closed.
So get it while the gettin’ is good.
The Oklahoma bombing story, as it now appears in the accepted version, has similarly troubling aspects. Lucky we had another Oswald to take the fall.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342999,00.html
Some Jews are prepared to acknowledge their bloody role in the USSR’s charnel house.
These days Walter Durante would be an “eyewitness” to the terror attack of September, 11. And he’d be working in one of the major TV networks. Plus ça change…
http://btjunkie.org/torrent/9-11-Conspiracy-September-Clues-NO-PLANE-Theory-DivxMonkey/4358cfe6745bdb5be51227e8c4e5b669ab3ae1a06cb1
Problem is that the next holodomor is at home, not in some far-off land.
Hopefully there will be an American Solzhenitsyn to chronicle our travails.
I believe Steven Jones is an attempt at damage control. A well-credentialed academic to divert attention from the no-planes theorists. The active participation of the media in this tragedy is the real story. The lack of wake vortices left by the “airlines” is the dead giveaway.
The Malcolm Muggeridge Prize for independent thinking goes to Dr Judy Woods. Not that she knows the answers, just for the temerity for posing them.
Yes, I’ve learned a thing or two, John Thames. Hopefully some of the little pigs waiting in the abattoir pen start squealing about sausages, mortadella, and the danger of apathy.
That’s a hundred. Comment thread is now closed.
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