Recognition had very little to do with Walter Duranty. It was a popular policy in 1933--even among some people who later condemned it--for reasons having little to do with sympathy for Soviet internal policy. As I wrote here a few months ago at
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-democrat-us-presidents.449077/#post-17405492 on whether a more conservative Democratic president than FDR would have recognized the USSR:
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Well, in the first place the Democrats are very unlikely to win the presidency in 1918 no matter who they nominate. As for 1932, there are plenty of Democrats who might have been chosen who would have been more conservative than FDR--Smith, Garner, Baker, Ritchie, etc. But I wouldn't assume they wouldn't recognize the Soviet Union--plenty of conservative businessmen supported recognition in 1933, partly because they wanted more trade with Russia to get the US out of the Depression, and partly to check Japanese expansionism in the Far East. See
The "Great Conspiracy" of 1933: A Study in Short Memories
PAUL F. BOLLER, JR.
Southwest Review
Vol. 39, No. 2 (SPRING 1954), pp. 97-112
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43463960?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Boller summarized his findings in his
Memoirs of an Obscure Professor:
"...Writers like William F. Buckley and newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News charged that recognition planted the seeds of Communist subversion in the United States and they all blamed FDR for it. As the Dallas Morning News put it angrily on November 17, 1953: "Russia was recognized solely because Franklin D. Roosevelt as President insisted upon it."
"It was difficult for me to believe that the question of Soviet recognition was that simple—or that sinister. Late in 1953, therefore, I began spending part of each day in the stacks of SMU's Fondren Library turning the pages of countless magazines and newspapers back in 1933 to see if I could team with some precision just how Soviet recognition came about and what the American people thought about it at the time. The results were surprising, even to me; the majority of newspapers and the bulk of the American business community, I found, favored recognition at the time. They saw the possibility of profitable trade with Russia, for one thing; for another, they thought Russian recognition might serve to check Japanese aggression in China. The Dallas Morning News, I discovered to my delight, had been especially eager for recognition. "Some object to recognition," said the News late in 1933, "on the ground that Russia's system of government is communistic and in general antireligious. Internationally, however, each State in theory has the right to determine its own form of government and sphere of activity. . . . The general opinion in this country is that Russia and the United States should resume normal and diplomatic relations, since they have many common interests, especially in the Far East, and can readily develop trade relations, mutually profitable . . . "
"To the Dallas Morning News, Russia was "Just Another Customer." A News cartoon portrayed a Russian woman waiting before the counter in a grocery store to make her purchases while Uncle Sam, the clerk, tells two protesting women (the American Federation of Labor and the Daughters of the American Revolution): "Listen! 1 ain't goin' to marry the gal!" But my favorite finding was the report of the love feast held in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on November 24, 1933, to celebrate recognition. It was an elegant party attended by Soviet officials (including Maxim Litvinov, chief Russian negotiator) and by prominent businessmen representing just about every major corporation in the United States. The high point of the evening came when the 2500 guests stood and faced a stage behind which hung a huge American flag beside the Red flag with Soviet hammer and sickle while the organ played "My Country of Thee" and then switched into the "Internationale." I wrote up my findings in an article entitled "The 'Great Conspiracy' of 1933: A Study in Short Memories," which appeared in the Southwest Review in the spring of 1954..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=zvuuL-BoDt0C&pg=PT19
Note incidentally that on the recognition issue, FDR "was careful to enlist they support of Al Smith and other prominent Catholic politicians..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=9rViPobMmoYC&pg=PA243