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The Denigration of Gareth
Jones.
Press release
On Gareth’s return to
civilization in Berlin on March 29th 1933 he gave a Press Release
to H.R.Knickerbocker who distributed it widely throughout Britain and to his
own newspaper, The New York Evening Post. This was done with haste
possibly to preempt a statement by Walter Duranty or because Gareth had to
give his prestigious lecture to the R.I.I.A., Chatham House, London, on
March 31st.
Duranty’s Rebuttal
On March 31st
Walter Duranty rebutted Gareth’s Press Release in the now well known
scurrilous article RUSSIANS HUNGRY, BUT NOT STARVING where he attacks
Gareth directly . “Since I talked to Mr. Jones I have made exhaustive
inquiries about this alleged famine situation. … There is no actual
starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from
diseases due to malnutrition.”
Gareth Jones Replied
Gareth replied in the New
York Times on May 13th 1933.
Accused of Espionage
Gareth wrote that he was a
marked man on the black list of the O.G.P.U. and was accused of espionage.
Maxim Litvinoff [Soviet Foreign
Minister] sent a special cable from Moscow to the Soviet Embassy in London
to tell them to make the strongest of complaints to Mr. Lloyd George about
him. A.J. Sylvester, Lloyd George’s secretary was called to the Embassy on
April 8th to see Ambassador Maisky.
The Moscow
Correspondents were called upon to accuse Gareth of lying about the Famine.
“The first reliable report
of the Russian famine was given to the world by an English journalist, a
certain Gareth Jones, at one time secretary to Lloyd George. … To protect
us, and perhaps with some idea of heightening the authenticity of his
reports, he emphasized his Ukrainian foray rather than our conversation as
the chief source of his information. … The need to remain on friendly
terms with the censors at least for the duration of the trial (of the
Metrovick Engineers) was for all of us a compelling professional necessity.
… Throwing down Jones was as unpleasant a chore as fell to any of us in
years of juggling facts to please dictatorial regimes—but throw him down we
did, unanimously and in almost identical formulas of equivocation. …
“We admitted enough to soothe
our consciences, but in roundabout phrases that damned Jones as a liar. The
filthy business having been disposed of, someone ordered vodka and zakuski,
Umansky [Soviet Press Officer] joined the celebration, and the party did not
break up until the early morning hours.
Assignment
in Utopia By Eugene Lyons. Published in 1937 (New York) by Harcourt Brace]
page 575.
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