Buch, Englisch, 432 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 807 g
Walter Duranty: The New York Times's Man in Moscow
Buch, Englisch, 432 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 807 g
ISBN: 978-0-19-753652-0
Verlag: Oxford University Press
Short, unattractive, hobbling about Stalin's Moscow on a wooden leg, Walter Duranty was an unlikely candidate for the world's most famous foreign correspondent. Yet for almost twenty years his articles filled the front page of The New York Times with gripping coverage of the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. A witty, engaging, impish character with a flamboyant life-style, he was a Pulitzer Prize winner, the individual most credited with helping to win the U.S. recognition for the Soviet regime, and the reporter who had predicted the success of the Bolshevik state when all others claimed it was doomed. But, as S.J. Taylor reveals in this provocative biography, Walter Duranty played a key role in perpetrating some of the greatest lies history has ever known.
Stalin's Apologist deftly unfolds the story of this accomplished but sordid and tragic life. Drawing on sources ranging from newspapers to private letters and journals to interviews with such figures as William Shirer and W. Averell Harriman, Taylor's vivid narrative unveils a figure driven by ambition, whose early success reporting on Bolshevik Russia--he was foremost in predicting Stalin's rise to power--established his international reputation, fed his overconfident contempt for his colleagues, and indeed led him to identify with the Soviet dictator. Thus during the great Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s, which Stalin engineered to crush millions of peasants who resisted his policies, Duranty dismissed other correspondents' reports of mass starvation and, though secretly aware of the full scale of the horror, effectively reinforced the official cover-up of one of history's greatest man-made disasters. Later, he took the rigged show trials of Stalin's Great Purges at face value, blithely accepting the guilt of the victims. He believed himself the leading expert on the Soviet Union, and his faith in his own insight drew him into a downward spiral of distortions and untruths, typified by his memorable excuse for Stalin's crimes, "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
Taylor brilliantly captures the full range of Duranty's astonishing life, from his participation in the Satanic orgies of Aleister ("the Beast") Crowley, to his dramatic front-line reporting during World War I, to his epic womanizing and heavy drug and alcohol abuse. It is the bitter, ironic story of a man who had the rare opportunity to bring to light the suffering of the millions of Stalin's victims, but remained a prisoner of vanity, self-indulgence, and success.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Medien-, Informations und Kommunikationswirtschaft Presse & Journalismus
- Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften Journalismus & Presse
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
Weitere Infos & Material
- Prologue
- I Liars Go to Hell
- II Maggots upon an Apple
- III For You But Not for Me
- IV A Sea of Blood
- V A Mad Hatter's Tea Party
- VI "Luck Broke My Way"
- VII A Roman Saturnalia
- VIII The Mysterious Fatalism of the Slav
- IX Applied Stalinism
- X Dizzy with Success
- XI A Blanket of Silence
- XII The "Famine" Is Mostly Bunk
- XIII The Masters of Euphemism
- XIV Getting Away With It
- XV Hypocritical Psychologists
- XVI A Citizen of the World
- XVII Hollywood
- XVIII I Write As You Please
- XIX Midnight Minus One Minute
- XX Death Is the End
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
