Walter Duranty writing in the New York Times on April 5, 1933:
MOSCOW – April 5. – In the excitement over the Spring sowing campaign and the reports of an increased food shortage, a fact that has been almost overlooked is that the production of coal, pig iron, steel, oil, automobiles, tractors, automotive parts, locomotives and machine tools has increased by 20 to 35 per cent during recent months.
That is the most effective proof that the food shortage as a whole is less grave than was believed – or, if not, at least distribution has greatly improved, which comes to the same thing for practical purposes.
Not so much. Millions died, victims of the genocidal man-made famine, orchestrated by the Soviets that Ukrainians today remember as the Holodomor. No-one knows how many exactly. As Nikita Khrushchev said later, “No one was counting.”
Not that that would have worried Walter Duranty.