Walter Duranty (1884–1957)

An unintentionally hilarious book. Duranty, a long-time correspondent in Moscow (principally for the New York Times), purports to give the reader a look at the Soviet leadership as of late 1948 (the book came out in early 1949), and how the Politburo worked. One entire chapter (on Voznesensky) was outdated around the time of publication -- since the subject had been removed from the Politburo a few weeks after the book was published, and arrested not long after (and executed in 1950). The chapter on secret police chief Lavrenti Beria is singularly anodyne and bland for someone who at the time was running the largest slave-labor organization in the world. A comment on the wives of Russian politicians being self-effacing, in the context of Molotov's wife, overlooks the fact that she was implicated in a spy scandal in the late 1930s, and arrested for treason in 1948 -- BEFORE publication. The materials covering the Ukrainian famine are also very bland, and try to deflect blame from Stalin -- though reading Anne Applebaum's book "Red Famine" (which by coincidence I'd read right before this) paints a very different story. Voroshilov's chapter glides over his involvement in the purges of the late 30s and his failures in Finland and the defence of Leningrad, and Duranty is laughably wrong in believing (or so he would have you have it) the case against Tukachevsky. Read this book if you want a good laugh, or a master-class in experts bluffing their way through it.… (més)

If you read this book, and only this book, you might be entertained by the stories of the Russian Civil War, and you might get an interesting idea of how the NEP evolved, how Stalin won his struggles, and (to the extent it's even discussed) how collectivization came about. And you'd probably be mislead. Duranty, these days, is notorious for the Pulitzer he won for reporting during the era of Holodomor, the famine of the early 30s in the Ukraine, but it's barely touched on in the book. You see some anecdotes -- a few treated humorously -- about the role of the G.P.U., but no real indication of the true nature of the terror even in the 20s, let alone the evolving terror post-Kirov (whose assassination is mentioned). Don't be fooled by the jocular nature -- in many respects, this is a dishonest book, and it absolutely requires reading around the subject in order to pick at the great number of sins of omission Duranty commits. Recommended only if you want his point of view, and if you have a lot of salt.… (més)