One Life, One Kopek

Walter Duranty (1884-1957) was an Anglo-American journalist who served as the Moscow Bureau Chief of The New York Times from 1922 to 1936. Duranty won a 1932 Pulitzer Prize for a series of laudatory stories on the Soviet Union. Until his denial of widespread famine in the USSR, he was a highly regarded journalist. Kirkus Reviews described One Life, One Kopek as "a story of a youth brought up as servant and companion to the children of an aristocrat, exiled to Siberia as a scapegoat for his young master, and thereafter in perpetual flight from authority, fertile soil for revolutionary seed. Fearless -- foolhardy -- imaginative -- swayed by passions and moods, he plays the game of the Revolutionary forces in various capacities, under various aliases, finds conflict between his love and his loyalties and the ideals win. He parts with the girl he loves, and sets alight the fuse that will explode the center of counter-revolutionary activities where she was found again."