Crowl, James William. Angels in Stalin’s Paradise: Western Reporters in Soviet Russia, A

Case Study of Louis Fischerand Walter Duranty. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 1982. Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1978. viii + 224 pp. Notes, Tables, Bibliography. ISBN: 0819121851 : 081912186X (pbk.).

Tables:

“Selected Grain Statistics, 1925-1932” (115)

“Percentage of Peasant Households and Crop Area Collectivized, 1930-1935 (134)

“Grain Exports” (137)

Crowl follows the careers of Duranty and Fischer from their early working careers before their work in the USSR to the post-World War II Era. Since he quotes extensively from their published articles describing the USSR circa the Famine years, Crowl’s bibliography is provides helpful citations for locating the pertinent articles.

Chapters of particular relevance are:

III. “Dateline Moscow” (27-46)

“Soviet Nationality Policy” (37-38)

“Duranty Denies Police State” (41-43)

“I venture to say that no one who behaves himself has any more to fear from the ‘Gay-Payoo’ than the average American citizen from the Department of Justice. Much has been written about spies surrounding foreigners in Russia—foreign correspondents in particular. It is all rubbish” (Crowl, 42, quoting Duranty, “Cheka Terror Rule Put 50,000 to Death,” New York Times, September 14, 1923, p. 9).

V. “1928-1932: The First Five-Year Plan” (87-87-131)

“Duranty Hails Collectivization” (103-108)

VI. “Concealing the Famine, 1932-1934” (133-180)

“The Emergence of the Famine” (134-137)

“Dimensions of the Famine” (137-138)

“First-Hand Reports of the Suffering” (138-140)

“The Position of the Foreign Correspondents” (140-143)

“Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize” (143-148)

Reasoning how the august New York Times could tolerate such sloppy craftsmanship by their ace reporter, Crowl cites the following warning by Karl Bickel, President of the United Press:

Americans who suppose that editors are inclined to cheer their correspondents in the fearless pursuit of truth have a naively idyllic view of modern journalism. They forget that the principal commodity of the newspaper is news, not truth, and the two do not always coincide. … The correspondent who gets himself expelled or even disliked for talking out of turn puts his employers to great expense and, more important, endangers their sources of information (Interview with Eugene Lyons (July 17, 1972), quoted in Crowl, 197-198).

“1932: The Onset of the Crisis” (148-154)

“Famine: Early 1933” (154-162)

“Concealing the Famine: May to September, 1933” (162-167)

Duranty is quoted:

But, as far as the writer could learn, there was nothing like famine conditions. When he mentioned the word ‘golod’ (sic)—literally ‘hunger,’ which has meant famine in Russia for the past thousand years—they smiled. ‘Not golod,’ (sic) they said, ‘but it was difficult.’ (Crowl, 166, quoting Duranty, “Abundance found in North Caucasus,” New York Times, September 14, 1933, p. 14).

It must be understood that utterance of the words, “holod,” or, “holodomor” was strictly forbidden, and could have resulted in severe punishment for the interviewee. Those interviewed by Duranty in this regard were wise to decline using those specific words.

Concealing the Famine: After 1933 (167-180)

Chamberlain, William Henry. The Ukraine: A Submerged Nation. New York: MacMillan

Co., 1944. vii + 91 pp. Index. LCCN: 44-47714.

Germane chapters of this general history of Ukraine include:

“War, Revolution, Nationalist Rebirth” (37-52)

“The Ukraine Under the Soviets” (52-64)

Notes Soviet figures of 10% death rate (60)

Description of the village of Cherkassy “634:2072 inhabitants of the village had died” (60-61).

Child City Death Roll (61)

Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. x + 412. Notes, Bibliography, Index, Black-and-white Photographic Illustrations. ISBN: 0-19-504054-6.

Conquest states that the Famine death toll was higher than all the nations’ losses in World War I (4). He discusses the social, economic, and political implications of subjugation through fear, hunger, collectivization, and dekulakization. He discusses the use of Soviet literary fiction as a source, since samizdat found its way to the West. Conquest refers to a paper by Janusz Radziejowski in the Journal of Ukrainian Studies, No. 9, 1980, pp. 3-17 for an extensive Soviet source list.

Conquest translates the secret order of February 1924 regarding police instructions for record-keeping on “suspected counter-revolutionaries” (71-72).

Definition of kulak (74-75)

Cost of deportation higher than unpayable taxes (118)

Vasily Grossman quoted regarding the dehumanization of kulaks, “They looked on the so-called ‘kulaks’ as cattle, swine, loathsome, repulsive; they had no souls . . . They were not human beings (129).

The disabled were deported as well (137)

Orders to the 25,000’ers (147-148)

Letter to Stalin apportioning his share of the blame, cited by Roy Medvedev (161)

OGPU report 1932 (172)

Model Statutes of Collective Farm (182-183)

Famine in Central Asia and Kazakh (189-198)

[Note: In Peter Trimpolis My Rocky Road to Life, he mentions a Ukrainian population living in the Kalmytsk steppe:

I also heard that there were many villages in the Kalmytsk steppe where only Ukrainians lived. The villages were located far away near the Caspian Sea. I wondered how our Ukrainian people had immigrated there many years ago, and how they were able to preserve their language since they were so far removed from home (101).]

Food differential by class, bosses eat at cheap restaurants (230-231)

Lev Kopolev quoted: “Nor did I lose my faith. As before, I believed because I wanted to believe” (232-233).

1933 diet described (244)

Physical symptoms of starvation death (253)

United Nations definition of genocide adopted 1950 (272-273)

“Kuban, Don, and Volga” (274-282)

“Children (283-298)

Includes “Song of Kolkhoz Pioneer” (294)

Death toll (306)

“The Record of the West” (308-321)

“Responsibilities” (332-330)

Conquest, Robert, Dana Dalrymple, James Mace, et al. The Man-made Famine in

Ukraine. American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Series. Washington: American Enterprises Institute Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy, 1984. i + 39 pp. Bibliography. ISBN: 0844735523 (pbk.)

Discussion format of opening statement followed by discussion. Novak points to the debate that took place at the time when the Korean Airlines jetliner was shot down, killing 269 people, and the world paid attention (1).

Conquest provides a general history of the Famine, and discusses Stalin’s guilt and concurrent knowledge of the Famine. Speaking of Novak’s point about the international fervor regarding the death of a comparatively small number of people, he continues:

A Ukrainian friend of mine observed that to match the slaughter that occurred in Ukraine, it would be necessary to shoot down an airliner with 269 passengers every day for the next seventy-five years. I will leave you with that thought (8).

James Mace mentions demographic work by the Soviet Maksudov, who “analyzed the age structure of females by oblast (region) in the 1959 population. . . . demographic evidence of massive mortality in this period appears in fifteen of the sixteen oblasts of Soviet Ukraine (9-10).

Dana Dalrymple outlines The Five-Year Plan, mechanization, procurement, false reporting of crop production figures (15). Quoting Vasily Grossman, after an impossible quota was ordered, “In the village soviet, even those who weren’t drinkers took to drink out of terror” (15). Stalin’s anger against Ukraine (16) is also discussed.

This work addresses availability of documents, and testimonies, including those of the Harvard Refugee Project of the 1950’s.

Campaigns of the 25,000’ers, and 16,000, and 5,000 people campaigns to compel collectivization/dekulakization/dispossession are described.

The historians address the suffering of children--physical, spiritual, moral, and the denunciation syndrome that was so prevalent in those years, as exemplified by Pavel Morozov. While Morozov was later killed for denouncing his parents, a statue of him was erected at the Komsomol Headquarters in Moscow (21).

American Relief Association of the earlier Famine is mentioned (23-24).

Primary source photography (24-25)

Soviet crackdown on writers who wrote regarding the Famine (27-28), dissidents vs. compelled silence (32-34).

Individual agricultural cooperation vs. forced labor collectivization (29-30).

Vendetta (30-32)

The significance of historians in formation of the human spirit (37)

Cox, Terry. Peasants, Class, and Capitalism: The Rural Research of L. N. Kritsman and His

School. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. viii + 269 pp. Glossary, Abbreviations, Map of European Russia, Bibliography, Index. ISBN: 0-19-878014-1.

This source valuable for evaluating conditions before the Famine (1920-1929). Its chapters focus heavily on Marxist agrarian theory, i.e.: “Marxist Theory and Russian Peasant Society,” “Development of the Agrarian Marxist Perspective,” and “Social Character of the Peasantry: The Finding of the Agrarian Marxists’ Research.”

Davies, R.W. The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929-1930. The Industrialization of Soviet Russia

Series. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980. viii + 216pp. Tables, Glossary, Name and Subject Indexes, Bibliography. ISBN: 0-674-82600-0.

This book is useful in studying the collective farm system during the pre-Famine time-period. Its Glossary contains abbreviations and acronyms of Soviet collective agriculture, and a list of related books and periodicals.

de Mowbray, Stephen. Key Facts in Soviet History, Vol. 1 1917-June 22, 1941. Boston: G.K.

Hall & Co., 1990. xxv + 386 pp. Maps, List of Terms and Abbreviations, List of Sources, Index. ISBN: 0-8161-1820-5.

Chronologically arranged entries noted added sometimes daily, but generally several times weekly. Based on British Parliamentary Papers, United States official publications, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chartham House, as well as encyclopedias, books, etc.

Devereux, Stephen. Theories of Famine. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. xiii + 208

pp. List of Figures, Bibliography, Subject and Name Indices. ISBN: 0745014178 (pbk).

Based on the 1986 report, Origins of Famine, this book is a solid general reference about various aspects of a famine in general, and provides worldwide examples. The Ukrainian Famine is considered a prime example of government policies directly causing famine (8). “Malignant intent” of the government (130).

“Case study: The Soviet Famine of 1932-1934” (140-142). Stalin’s promotion of “extract a tribute from the peasantry to finance industrialization” (140), the theory put forward by Prebrezhansky, resulted in “Agricultural output fell by 40% in the seven years from 1929-1936. Food production per capita never returned to its 1913 level before Stalin’s death in 1953” (141).

Comparing to the Chinese “Great Leap Forward Famine,” Devereux states, “If the Chinese famine was a tragedy of errors, the Soviet famine was a tragedy of intent” (146).

“Political repression through the weapon of mass starvation” (188)