Sunday, April 20, 2008

NYeT: What Ukranian Famine?

Journalists were warned they would be shut out of the trial completely
if they wrote news stories about the famine. Most of the foreign press
corp yielded to the Soviet demand and either didn't cover the famine or
wrote stories sympathetic to the official Soviet propaganda line that it
didn't exist. Among those was Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Walter Duranty
of the New York Times who sent one dispatch stating "...all
talk of famine now is ridiculous."
governments of the West adopted a passive
attitude toward the famine, although most of them had become aware of the
true suffering in the Ukraine through confidential diplomatic channels.
In November 1933, the United States, under its new president, Franklin
D. Roosevelt, even chose to formally recognized Stalin's Communist government
and also negotiated a sweeping new trade agreement. The following year,
the pattern of denial in the West culminated with the admission of the
Soviet Union into the League of Nations.
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