back, after having been led round by the nose and had enough to eat, and say that Russia is a paradise.  The winter is going to be one of great suffering there and there is starvation.  The government is the most brutal in the world.  The peasants hate the Communists.  This year thousands and thousands of the best men in Russia have been sent to Siberia and the prison island of Solovki.  In the Donetz Basin conditions are unbearable.  Thousands are leaving.  One reason  why I left Hughesovska so quickly was that all I could get to eat was a roll of bread – and that is all I had up to 7 o’clock.  Many Russians are too weak to work.  I am terribly sorry for them.

Never-the-less great strides have been made in many industries and there is a good chance that when the Five-Years Plan is over Russia may become prosperous.  But before that there will be great suffering, many riots and many deaths.

The Communists are doing excellent work in education, hygiene and against alcohol.  Butter is 16/- a pound in Moscow; prices are terrific and boots etc. cannot be had.  There is nothing in the shops.  The Communists were remarkably kind to me and gave me an excellent time.

On Gareth Jones’ eventual return to the Britain, three articles were then published in The London Times by ‘Our Correspondent’ outlining conditions in Soviet Russia.

In April 1931 Gareth Jones left the employ of David Lloyd George to join the then renowned P.R. advisors of Ivy Lee and Associates in Wall Street, New York.  Lee who had interests in Standard Oil, intended to write a book on the Soviet Union and it was Jones’ brief to undertake the research.  That summer he was invited to accompany Jack Heinz II, the grandson of the founder of the ‘57’ varieties organisation to ‘Bolshevik Russia’, this time for a six weeks tour.  They covered the length and breadth of the country and finally visited Ukraine.  Jones kept a very extensive diary which Jack Heinz then copied into a small book, entitled: A Diaryi and published anonymously.  Gareth Jones wrote the foreword to this book:

With knowledge of Russia and the Russian language, it was possible to get off the beaten path, to talk with grimy workers and rough peasants, as well as such leaders as Lenin’s widow and Karl Radek.  We visited vast engineering projects and factories, slept on the bug-infested floors of peasants’ huts, shared black bread and cabbage soup with the villagers - in short, got into direct touch with the Russian people in their struggle for existence and were thus able to test their reactions to the Soviet Government’s dramatic moves.

Noted in the diary were the pitiful conditions of the peasants and a typical entry made during their walking tour in the countryside was when they met “one old man with a cap on the back of his head who came up and greeted us”:

“And how is it with you, tovarishch (comrade)?” they inquired

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