I've argued w/ 80+ year old members of the CPUSA that cite Walter Duranty on the famine and Joseph Davies, "Mission to Moscow, " as "proof" of the Nazism of the Old Bolsheviks slaughtered between '36-'38.
What is your excuse, Lance? You have to be a fraction of their age. I though Klo McKinsey on one of the M-L lists was the nuttiest on thje internut "left" what with his citations of garbage like Sayers and Kahn's, "The Secret War Against Russia, " from 1946 alleging Trotsky conspired with the Nazis.
Taylor, S.J., "Stalin's apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York Time's man in Moscow", (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
The memoirs of Malcolm Muggeridge, who reported from the USSR then, and knew Duranty, also shed light on that very dubious character.
-- Michael Pugliese