The US Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor Genocide Awareness is collecting signatures for a petition calling for the revocation of the Pulitzer Prize awarded to journalist Walter Duranty (1884-1957), who denied the mass artificial famine of 1932-1933.
“We are only 500 signatures away from achieving 10,000 signatures for the Walter Duranty Pulitzer Revocation petition. If you have not already done so, please sign the petition and forward to your distribution lists or post in your newsletters. We are hoping to achieve that number by the end of this year which is in two weeks. Next year we plan to address the Pulitzer Board one more time to revoke Duranty’s prize,” wrote Marusia Kvit-Flynn, a representative of the Duranty Revocation Sub-Committee of the US Holodomor Committee.
The petition is available at this link.
English-American journalist Walter Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a series of manipulative reports from the Soviet Union, in which he justified the existence of concentration camps, explained the necessity of eliminating enemies of Soviet power, and argued for the need for Stalinist totalitarianism.
In his articles for The New York Times, Duranty denied the historical fact of the artificial mass famine in Ukraine. Additionally, the journalist betrayed Gareth Jones, a fellow journalist who returned from the famine-stricken villages of Kharkiv in March 1933 and inadvertently revealed details of his trip to Duranty. Later, Duranty led a smear campaign against Jones. The owner of the Pulitzer Prize also supported Stalin’s policies in the 1930s.
In the early 2000s, there were attempts by the public to strip Duranty of the Pulitzer Prize. However, at that time, the award committee rejected the petitions.
Cover: Getty Images
