A Columbia University history professor hired by The New York Times to make an independent assessment of the coverage of one of its correspondents in the Soviet Union during the 1930's said yesterday that the Pulitzer Prize the reporter received should be rescinded because of his ''lack of balance'' in covering Stalin's government.

The Times had asked the professor, Mark von Hagen, to examine the coverage of the correspondent, Walter Duranty, after receiving a letter in early July from the Pulitzer Prize Board seeking its comment. In its letter to The Times, the board said it was responding to ''a new round of demands'' that the prize awarded to Mr. Duranty in 1932 be revoked. The most vocal demands came from Ukrainian-Americans who contended that Mr. Duranty should be punished for failing to report on a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933.

In his report to The Times, Professor von Hagen described the coverage for which Mr. Duranty won the Pulitzer -- his writing in 1931, a year before the onset of the famine -- as a ''dull and largely uncritical recitation of Soviet sources.''

''That lack of balance and uncritical acceptance of the Soviet self-justification for its cruel and wasteful regime,'' the professor wrote, ''was a disservice to the American readers of The New York Times and the liberal values they subscribe to and to the historical experience of the peoples of the Russian and Soviet empires and their struggle for a better life.''