Gareth’s article in New York Evening Post,
followed by
Walter Duranty’s article in response
and
Gareth’s reply in the New York Times
- - - -
Famine grips Russia
Millions
Dying, Idle on Rise, Says Briton
---
Gareth Jones, Lloyd George
Aid, Reports
Devastation
---
TOURS FARM AREAS,
FINDS FOOD GONE
Asserts Reds Arrest British to Check Public Wrath-Peasants. "Wait for
Death"
Evening Post Foreign Service New York 1933
BERLIN, March. 29th,
- Russia today is in the grip of a famine which is proving as disastrous as
the catastrophe of 1921 when millions died, reported Gareth Jones, Foreign
Affairs secretary to former Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Great
Britain, who arrived in Berlin this morning en route to London after a long
walking tour through the Ukraine and other districts in the Soviet Union.
Mr. Jones, who speaks Russian
fluently, is the first foreigner to visit the Russian countryside since the
Moscow authorities forbade foreign correspondents to leave the city. His
report, which he will deliver to the Royal Institute of International
Affairs tomorrow, explains the reason for this prohibition. Famine on a
colossal scale, impending death of millions from hunger, murderous terror
and the beginnings of serious unemployment in a land that had hitherto
prided itself on the fact that very man had a job-this is the summary of Mr.
Jones’s first-hand observations.
He told the EVENING POST:
"The arrest of the British engineers in Moscow is a symbol of panic in
consequence of conditions worse than in 1921. Millions are dying of hunger.
The trial, beginning Saturday, of the British engineers is merely a pendant
to the recent shooting of thirty-five prominent workers in agriculture,
including the Vice-Commissar of the Ministry of Agriculture, and is an
attempt to check the popular wrath at the famine which haunts every district
of the Soviet Union.
"I walked along through
villages end twelve collective farms. Everywhere was the cry, ‘There is no
bread. We are dying. This cry came from every part of Russia, from the
Volga, Siberia, White Russia, the North Caucasus, Central Asia. I tramped
through the black earth region because that was once the richest farm land
in Russia and because the correspondents have been forbidden to go there to
see for themselves what is happening.
"In the train a Communist
denied ‘to me that there was a famine. I flung a crust of bread which I had
been eating from my own supply into a spittoon. A peasant fellow-passenger
fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw an orange peel into the
spittoon and the peasant again grabbed it and devoured it. The Communist
subsided. I stayed overnight in a village where there used to be 200 oxen
and where there now are six. The peasants were eating the cattle fodder and
had only a month’s supply left. They told me that many had already died of
hunger. Two soldiers came to arrest a thief. They warned me against travel
by night as there were too many ‘starving’ desperate men.
"‘We are waiting for death’ was
my welcome, but See, we still, have our cattle fodder. Go farther south.
There they have nothing. Many houses are empty of people already dead,’ they
cried.
"A foreign expert returning
from Kazakstan told me that 1,000,000 out of 5,000,000 there have died of
hunger - those who read his glowing descriptions of plentiful food in their
starving land. "The future is blacker than the present. There is
insufficient seed. Many peasants are too weak physically to work on the
land. The new taxation policy, promising to take only a fixed amount of
grain from the peasants, will fail to encourage production because the
peasants refuse to trust the Government." In short, Mr. Jones concluded, the
collectivization policy of the Government and the resistance of the peasants
to it have brought Russia to the worst catastrophe since the famine of 1921
and have swept away the population of whole districts.
Coupled with this, the prime
reason for the breakdown, he added, is the terror, lack of skill and
collapse of transport and finance. Unemployment is rapidly increasing, he
declared, because of the lack of raw materials. The lack of food and the
wrecking of the currency and credit system have forced many of the factories
to close or to dismiss great numbers of workers.
The Jones report, because of
his position, because of his reputation for reliability and impartiality and
because he is the only first-hand observer who has visited the Russian
countryside since it was officially closed to foreigners, is bound to
receive widespread attention in official England as well as among the public
of the country.
- - - - -
Duranty’s Article Following Gareth’s exposure
----
The New York Times,
Friday March 31st 1933.
RUSSIANS HUNGRY, BUT NOT STARVING
Deaths From Diseases Due to Malnutrition High, Yet the
Soviet is Entrenched
LARGER CITIES HAVE FOOD
Ukraine, North Caucasus and Lower Volga Regions Suffer
From Shortages.
KREMLIN'S 'DOOM' DENIED
Russian and Foreign Observers In Country See No Ground for
Predications of Disaster
By WALTER DURANTY
Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES
MOSCOW, March 30---In the
middle of the diplomatic duel between Great Britain and the Soviet Union
over the accused British engineers there appears from a British source a big
scare story in the American press about famine in the Soviet Union, with
"thousands already dead and millions menaced by death and starvation."
Its author is Gareth Jones, who
is a former secretary to David Lloyd George and who recently spent three
weeks in the Soviet Union and reached the conclusion that the country was
"on the verge of a terrific smash," as he told the writer.
Mr. Jones is a man of a keen
and active mind, and he has taken the trouble to learn Russian, which he
speaks with considerable fluency, but the writer thought Mr. Jones's
judgment was somewhat hasty and asked him on what it was based. It appeared
that he had made a forty-mile walk through villages in the neighborhood of
Kharkov and had found conditions sad.
I suggested that that was a
rather inadequate cross-section of a big country but nothing could shake his
conviction of impending doom.
Predictions of Doom Frequent.
The number of times foreigners,
especially Britons, have shaken rueful heads as they composed the Soviet
Union's epitaph can scarcely be computed, and in point of fact it has done
incalculable harm since the day when William C. Bullitt's able and honest
account of the situation was shelved and negatived during the Versailles
Peace Conference by reports that Admiral Kolchak, White Russian leader, had
taken Kazan - which he never did - and that the Soviet power was "one the
verge of an abyss."
Admiral Kolchak faded. Then
General Denikin took Orel and the Soviet Government was on the verge of an
abyss again, and General Yudenich "took" Petrograd. But where are Generals
Denikin and Yudenich now?
A couple of years ago another
British "eyewitness" reported a mutiny in the Moscow garrison and "rows of
corpses neatly piled in Theatre Square," and only this week a British news
agency revealed a revolt of the Soviet Fifty-fifth Regiment at Duria, on the
Manchurian border. All bunk, of course.
This is not to mention a more
regrettable incident of three years ago when an American correspondent
discovered half of Ukraine flaming with rebellion and "proved" it by
authentic documents eagerly proffered by Rumanians, which documents on
examination appeared to relate to events of eight or ten years earlier.
Saw No One Dying
But to return to Mr. Jones. He
told me there was virtually no bread in the villages he had visited and that
the adults were haggard, gaunt and discouraged, but that he had seen no dead
or dying animals or human beings.
I believed him because I knew
it to be correct not only of some parts of the Ukraine but of sections of
the North Caucasus and lower Volga regions and, for that matter, Kazakstan,
where the attempt to change the stock-raising nomads of the type and the
period of Abraham and Isaac into 1933 collective grain farmers has produced
the most deplorable results.
It is all too true that the
novelty and mismanagement of collective farming, plus the quite efficient
conspiracy of Feodor M. Konar and his associates in agricultural
commissariats, have made a mess of Soviet food production. (Konar was
executed for sabotage.)
But---to put it brutally---you
can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, and the Bolshevist leaders are
just as indifferent to the casualties that may be involved in their drive
toward socializaton as any General during the World War who ordered a costly
attack in order to show his superiors that he and his division possessed the
proper soldierly spirit. In fact, the Bolsheviki are more indifferent
because they are animated by fanatical conviction.
Since I talked to Mr. Jones I
have made exhaustive inquiries about this alleged famine situation. I have
inquired in Soviet commissariats and in foreign embassies with their network
of consuls, and I have tabulated information from Britons working as
specialists and from my personal connections, Russian and foreign.
Disease Mortality Is High
All of this seems to me to be
more trustworthy information than I could get by a brief trip through any
one area. The Soviet Union is too big to permit a hasty study, and it is the
foreign correspondent's job to present a whole picture, not a part of it.
And here are the facts:
There is a serious shortage
food shortage throughout the country, with occasional cases of well-managed
State or collective farms. The big cities and the army are adequately
supplied with food. There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation,
but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.
In short, conditions are
definitely bad in certain sections- the Ukraine, North Caucasus and Lower
Volga. The rest of the country is on short rations but nothing worse. These
conditions are bad, but there is no famine.
The critical months in this
country are February and March, after which a supply of eggs, milk and
vegetables comes to supplement the shortage of bread - if, as now, there is
a shortage of bread. In every Russian village food conditions will improve
henceforth, but that will not answer one really vital question---What about
the coming grain crop?
Upon that depends not the
future of the Soviet power, which cannot and will not be smashed, but the
future policy of the Kremlin. If through climatic conditions, as in
1921, the crop fails, then, indeed, Russia will be menaced by famine. If
not, the present difficulties will be speedily forgotten.
- - - -
Newspaper: NEW YORK TIMES
Date: May 13th , 1933.
Mr. Jones Replies
Former Secretary of Lloyd George Tells of
Observations in Russia
To the Editor of The New York Times :
On my return from Russia at the
end of March, I stated in an interview in Berlin that everywhere I
went in the Russian villages I heard the cry; "There Is no bread, we are
dying," and that there was famine In the Soviet Union, menacing the lives of
millions of people.
Walter Duranty, whom I must
thank for his continued kindness and helpfulness to hundreds of American and
British visitors to Moscow, immediately cabled a denial of the famine. He
suggested that my judgment was only based on a forty-mile tramp through
villages. He stated that he had inquired in Soviet commissariats and in the
foreign embassies and had come to the conclusion that there was no famine,
but that there was a "serious food shortage throughout the country. …
No actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread
mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.
Evidence From Several Sources.
While partially agreeing with
my Statement, he implied that my report was a "scare story" and compared it
with certain fantastic prophecies of Soviet downfall. He also made the
strange suggestion that I was forecasting the doom of the Soviet régime, a
forecast I have never ventured.
I stand by my statement that
Soviet Russia is suffering from a severe famine. It would be foolish to draw
this conclusion from my tramp through a small part of vast Russia, although
I must remind Mr. Duranty that it was my third visit to Russia, that I
devoted four years of university life to the study of the Russian language
and history and that on this occasion alone I visited in all twenty
villages, not only in the Ukraine, but also in the black earth district, and
in the Moscow region, and that I slept in peasants’ cottages, and did not
immediately leave for the next village.
My first evidence was gathered
from foreign observers. Since Mr. Duranty introduces consuls into the
discussion, a thing I am loath to do, for they are official representatives
of their countries and should not be quoted, may I say that I discussed the
Russian situation with between twenty and thirty consuls and diplomatic
representatives of various nations and that their evidence supported my
point of view. But they are not allowed to express their views in the press,
and therefore remain silent.
Journalists Are Handicapped.
Journalists, on the other hand,
are allowed to write, but the censorship has turned them into masters of
euphemism and understatement. Hence they give "famine" the polite name of
"food shortage" and "starving to death" is softened down to read as
"widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition." Consuls are not so
reticent in private conversation.
My second evidence was based on
conversations with peasants who had migrated into the towns from various
parts of Russia. Peasants from the richest parts of Russia coming into the
towns for bread. Their story of the deaths in their villages from starvation
and of the death of the greater part of their cattle and horses was tragic,
and each conversation corroborated the previous one.
Third, my evidence was based
upon letters written by German colonists in Russia, appealing for help to
their compatriots in Germany. "My brother’s four children have
died of hunger." "We have had no bread for six months." "If we do not get
help from abroad, there is nothing left but to die of hunger." Those are
typical passages from these letters.
Statements by Peasants.
Fourth, I gathered evidence
from journalists and technical experts who had been in the countryside. In
The Manchester Guardian, which has been exceedingly sympathetic
toward the Soviet régime, there appeared on March 25, 27 and 28 an excellent
series of articles on "The Soviet and the Peasantry" (which had not been
submitted to the censor). The correspondent, who had visited North Caucasus
and the Ukraine, states: "To say that there is famine in some of the’ most
fertile parts of Russia is to say much less than the truth: there is not
only famine, but-in the case of the North Caucasus at least-a state of war,
a military occupation." Of the Ukraine, he writes: "The population is
starving."
My final evidence is based on
my talks with hundreds of peasants. They were not the "kulaks"-those
mythical scapegoats for the hunger in Russia-but ordinary peasants. I talked
with them alone in Russian and jotted down their conversations, which are an
unanswerable indictment of Soviet agricultural policy. ‘The peasants said
emphatically that the famine was worse than in 1921 and that
fellow-villagers had died or were dying.
Mr. Duranty says that I saw in
the villages no dead human beings nor animals. That is true1 but
one does not need a particularly nimble brain to grasp that even in the
Russian famine districts the dead are buried and that there the dead animals
are devoured.
May I in conclusion
congratulate the Soviet Foreign Office on its skill in concealing the true
situation in the U. S. S. R.? Moscow is not Russia, and the sight of well
fed people there tends to hide the real Russia.
GARETH JONES.
London, May 1st 1933
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