Harrison E. Salisbury papers, 1927-1999

The American journalist Harrison E. Salisbury (1908-1993) was well-known for his reporting and books on the Soviet Union. A distinguished correspondent and editor for the New York Times, he was the first American reporter to visit Hanoi during the Vietnam War. After editing the campus daily at the University of Minnesota and working as a reporter for the Minneapolis Journal, he decided to pursue a career in journalism. Salisbury took a job with the United Press in St. Paul, soon circulating through other UP bureaus in Chicago, Washington D.C., and New York before being sent to Europe in 1942, where he visited London and Moscow on assignment. In 1944, Salisbury covered the Russian army's victory over the retreating German troops, which he later used as the basis for a series of articles for Colliers magazine and as a book entitled Russia on the Way 1946.

He joined the New York Times and returned to the Soviet Union in 1949 as the Times Russian correspondent. His reports from Moscow were heavily censored and were seen as controversial in the McCarthy anti-Communist atmosphere. After travelling through Siberia in the spring of 1954, he wrote a 14-part report "Russia Re-viewed," which received the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Although barred from the Soviet Union for five years after receiving the Pulitzer Prize, Salisbury was able to tour Poland Bulgaria Rumania and Albania in 1957 and his report on the deterioration of Communism in Eastern Europe led to a George Polk Memorial award for foreign news coverage. Allowed to visit the Soviet Union in 1959 and 1961-1962 Salisbury wrote several books describing the changes in the post-Stalin era. He also published Moscow Journal The End of Stalin 1961 which included the censored dispatches from his earlier five-year residence in Moscow. His knowledge of Stalin's regime provided the background for his well-received first novel The Northern Palmyra Affair (1962).

In 1962 Salisbury was named national news editor of the Times. He supervised the paper's excellent coverage of President Kennedy's assassination and in 1964 became assistant managing editor. In 1972 he was elevated to the rank of associate editor. At the end of 1973 he retired from the New York Times. After leaving The Times Salisbury continued to write and publish. He wrote about the Soviet Union in a series of books including Black Night White Snow (1978), One Hundred Years of Revolution (1983), and A Journey for Our Times A Memoir (1983, which also narrates his boyhood and early career as a journalist. His memoirs were elaborated in another book published in 1988 entitled A Time of Change. In retirement Salisbury traveled several times to China and wrote a book describing his history of the making of the Chinese Red Army following the course of the Long March: The Long March: The Untold Story (1985). Salisbury's reports on North Vietnam were given the Overseas Press Club and George Polk Memorial Awards and his experience was described in the book Behind the Lines (1967); he also wrote Orbit of China (1967), the best-seller The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (1969) and War Between Russia and China (1969). Salisbury's coverage of Al Capone's trial to his presence at the 1989 Tianamen Square uprising were described in Tianamen Diary Thirteen Days in June (1988).

Salisbury's other works include The Kingdom and the Power (1966), Russia in Revolution (1979), The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng (1992), and Heroes of My Time (1993). Salisbury wrote an authorized but independent history of the New York Times which was published as Without Fear or Favor (1980), which discusses the shift in the paper from news reporting to an active engagement in political events. Salisbury focuses his story on the decision of the Times to print the secret study of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers which provoked a confrontation with the Nixon administration. In 1964 he married Charlotte Young Rand and they lived in Manhattan and Taconic, Connecticut.