Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

by Anne Applebaum

By the end of 1933 the new Roosevelt administration was actively looking for reasons to ignore any bad news about the Soviet Union. The president’s team had concluded that developments in Germany and the need to contain the Japanese meant it was time, finally, for the United States to open full diplomatic relations with Moscow. Roosevelt’s interest in central planning and in what he thought were the USSR’s great economic successes—the president read Duranty’s reporting carefully—encouraged him to believe that there might be a lucrative commercial relationship too.88 Eventually a deal was struck. Litvinov arrived in New York to sign it—accompanied by Duranty. During a lavish banquet for the Soviet Foreign Minister at the Waldorf Astoria, Duranty was introduced to the 1,500 guests. He stood up and bowed. Loud applause followed. Duranty’s name, The New Yorker later reported, provoked “the only really prolonged pandemonium” of the evening. “Indeed, one quite got the impression that America, in a spasm of discernment, was recognizing both Russia and Walter Duranty.”89 With that, the cover-up seemed complete.