New Russia

DURANTY REPORTS RUSSIA -- Walter Duranty--Viking ($2.75). The best-known U. S. foreign correspondent is an Englishman. Like his compatriot, Sir Willmott Harsant Lewis, Washington correspondent of the London Times, Walter Duranty is a veteran at his post. Sent to Russia by the New York Times in 1921, he has been there off & on ever since, has gradually become the most official of unofficial U. S. ambassadors. When Commissar Maxim Litvinoff arrived last November in the U. S., Correspondent Duranty arrived with him. When Ambassador William C. Bullitt made his first official visit to the U. S. S. R. last December, Duranty was at his elbow. If any one man could be said to have reconciled Capitalist U. S. and Communist Russia, Duranty is the man. Critics have accused him of being no newshawk but a dove of peace who from long association with Soviet eagles has become their carrier pigeon. But unbiased readers of Duranty Reports Russia will agree that on the whole Duranty has done a difficult job objectively and well. From the twelve-year files of his dispatches to the Times his good friend Gustavus Tuckerman Jr., New York University instructor, has selected enough for a fat (401 pp.) volume. Readers will be enlightened, historians will be grateful.

An admirer of Lenin (whom he never succeeded in interviewing), Duranty takes the un-Russian view that Lenin sometimes made mistakes. The NEP (New Economic Policy), which temporarily allowed private capitalist enterprise to shore up tottering Communist industry, was made necessary, says Duranty, by Lenin's misreading of world events in 1917. Lenin counted on the World War ending in a stalemate, believed the World Revolution would then spread everywhere. Instead, the U. S. tipped the scales, Germany was beaten and Russia became the vulnerable enemy of all Europe. Duranty reminds his readers of Lenin's frank admission: "The real meaning of the New Economic Policy is that we have met a great defeat in our plans and that we are now making a strategic retreat."

Not a great eyewitness reporter, Duranty nevertheless has his purple passages. Thus he describes Moscow's homeless children (1925) : "For the past three years one of their chief strongholds has been the 'Catacombs,' as Moscow calls an acre-wide range of cellars under an enormous unfinished pre-War building right in the center of the city. The jungle life of these catacombs demanded such a toll of blood, so many corpses were thrown naked upon the outer snow, that the authorities have put a high wooden fence around the entire area and plan next year to raze this whole city block. . . . Suddenly there materializes beside you a group of children, seven, ten, and twelve years old. They have gnomelike, filthy faces, childish eyes, shaggy hair, men's long coats, trousers pinned up or cut and ragged. They shuffle together, taking counsel, then swift as swallows make one after another a leap for the counter, grabbing anything, running like the wind."

And historians will be grateful for his picture of Lenin addressing a meeting: "The buzz of conversation dies as he shuffles onto the stage before you. For a period you join in the frantic applause. Then you watch him, this little man in his plain suit, standing there modestly, almost humbly. He speaks in German, not very well, pausing occasionally or even asking a word from those beside him. At first, though the silence is complete, you can hardly hear him. Then his voice strengthens and you listen with feverish eagerness for his message. . . ."

Duranty explains Lenin's extraordinary authority (he was never officially dictator) by his often-proved superior ability in interpreting facts. He tells the story of how Lenin, at a committee meeting in early revolutionary days, encountered general opposition. Wrapping his head in his cloak he told his comrades to wake him when they had argued themselves into agreement with his plan. An hour or two later they woke him, said he was right.

Alert readers of Duranty's articles have noted in them an increasing tone of personal authority. From "the writer ventures to say" Journalist Duranty soon emerges to "I am convinced," "I am prepared to stake my reputation on the fact. . . ."

The Author had not much reputation to stake before he went to Russia. For seven years after leaving Cambridge (where he was a college-mate of Author Hugh Walpole) he drifted about "from port to port," writing an occasional story, tutoring an occasional gilded youth, enchanting occasional acquaintances with his conversation. The War got him a job as New York Times correspondent with the French army. In 1918 he became assistant Paris correspondent to the Times. Unscathed by bullets, he lost a foot in a French railway wreck after the War. In 1922 the Times made him its official Moscow correspondent. Great & good friend of the late Journalist William Bolitho, and of Quipnunc Alexander Woollcott (who describes Duranty as having "a faint air of skullduggery about him"), Walter Duranty, 49, is small, baldish, quietly alert, enthusiastic, quizzical, brimming with unprinted anecdotes. He lives in Moscow with his French wife, infant offspring.

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