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- Witnessing the Holodomor Firsthand
- © 2006. All Rights Reserved. www.garethjones.org
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- Early Life / Education
- Diary / Letter Observations of a Famine:
- 1930 – Lloyd George & First Unescorted Visit
- 1931 – With Jack Heinz II
- 1933 – Foray into Ukrainian Villages & Kharkiv
- Randolph Hearst
- 1935 Repeating Famine Allegations
- Thomas Walker Affair 1935
- Murdered by Chinese bandits or Soviet Retribution?
- Orwell’s Mr Jones…
- Memorial Plaque - Aberystwyth, Wales, 2006
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- Mother, Former Governess to John Hughes’ family between 1889-92, founder
of Hughesovka (now Donetsk).
- Father, Headmaster Barry County Grammar School.
- Gareth, Born 1905 in Barry, South Wales.
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- 1922-26 – 1st Class Honours Degree in French & German from
Aberystwyth University, Wales.
- 1923-25 - Université de Strasbourg: Diplôme Supérieur des Etudes
Françaises.
- 1926 – Exhibiton Scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge.
- 1927, 1928 & 1929 - College Prizeman – Plus Senior Scholar in 1928.
- 1929 – 1st Class Honours in German and Russian, with distinction in Oral
Examinations.
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- One month unsuccessful trial with The Times and through family
acquaintance Tom Jones, the long-standing British Government Cabinet
Secretary is introduced to Former World War One British Prime Minister
David Lloyd George.
- Appointed Foreign Affairs Advisor to Lloyd George.
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- Visits USSR in 1930, for 1st time, on behalf of Lloyd George;
soon after British Diplomatic Relations are restored having being broken
in 1927 due to the Arcos Spying Affair.
- On Leaving USSR, Gareth writes candidly to his parents:
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Hurray! It is wonderful
to be in Germany again, absolutely wonderful.
Russia is in a very bad state; rotten, no food, only bread; oppression,
injustice, misery among the workers and 90% discontented. I saw some
very bad things, which made me mad to think that people like [the Webbs] go
there and come back, after having been led round by the nose and had enough
to eat, and say that Russia is a paradise. In the South there is talk
of a new revolution, but it will never come off,
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- “…foreign delegations [are] blissfully ignorant of the hunger,
discontent, opposition, and hatred.”
- “…Donetz Basin, where there has been a serious breakdown in food
supplies.”
- A miner expressed …“Everybody is going away from the Donetz Basin,
because there is no food here. There is nothing in Russia.
The situation is terrible.”
- “The present food shortage was attributed by most Russians to two causes
– the agricultural revolution begun last year and the absence of a free
market... “It is all the fault of this collectivisation, which the
peasants hate. There is no meat, nothing at all.”
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- Head-hunted from Lloyd George’s Secretariat to work for world’s leading
PR agency on Wall Street as their Soviet expert.
- Chaperoned 21 year old Jack Heinz’s visit to USSR in August 1931.
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- Afterwards, compiled a privately published ‘Anonymously written’ book in
spring 1932, entitled: “Experiences of Russia – 1931 – A Diary” – namely
from Gareth’s Diaries.
- Arguably, the first Western book to ‘honestly’ report the onset of
famine conditions within the Soviet Union, again citing variations of
the word ‘starve’ on half a dozen occasions…
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- Gareth wrote the Foreword:
- “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.”
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- A doctor’s wife on the boat said to Jones:
- “Exiles? The peasants have been
sent away in thousands to starve.
They were exiled just because they worked hard all their lives.
- It’s terrible how they have treated them; they have not given them
anything; no bread cards even. They sent a lot to Tashkent, where I was,
and just left them on the square.
The exiles did not know what to do and many starved to death.”
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- “On Friday, I had exceptionally interesting talks … with Prof. Jules
Menken (LSE) a very well known economist. He was appalled with the
prospects: what he had seen was the complete failure of Marxism.
He dreaded this winter, when he thought millions would die of hunger.
- He had never seen such bungling & such breakdowns. What struck
him was the unfairness & the inequality. He had seen hungry
people one moment & the next moment he had lunched with Soviet
Commissars in the Kremlin with the best caviar, fish, game & the
most luxurious wines.”
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- The next day (on October 15th & 17th) Gareth
writes two articles for the Cardiff Western Mail to highlight the tragic
situation entitled; “Will there be Soup?”
- Incensed by the lack of other news from the USSR, & in line with his
Welsh Non-Conformist beliefs & virtues; Gareth decided to make a
trip at his earliest opportunity to make amends.
- After a busy schedule; ghosting Lloyd George’s War Memoirs – & just
ten days after being the first foreign journalist to fly with the newly
appointed German Chancellor, Adolph Hitler, he arrived in Moscow on the
5th March 1933:
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- After two days ‘tramping’ along the track, according to an American
article for Hearst by Gareth in 1935, his trek came to an abrupt end:
- “It happened in a small station, where I was talking with a group of
peasants: “We are dying,” they wailed and poured out the old story of
their woes. A red-faced, well-fed OGPU policeman in uniform approached
us and stood listening for a few moments.
- Then came the outburst, and from his lips poured a series of Russian
curses. “Clear away, you! Stop
telling him about hunger! Can’t you see he’s a foreigner?”
- He turned to me and roared: “Come along. What are you doing here? Show
me your documents.”
- Visions of a secret police prison darted before my mind. The OGPU man
looked at my passport and beckoned to one of the crowd, whom I had taken
to be an ordinary passenger, but who was obviously in the secret police.
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- He came to me and in the most polite and respectful terms bade me follow
him. “I shall have to take you to
the nearest city, Kharkov.”
- Throughout the journey I impressed him with the fact that I had
interviewed Lenin’s widow, and a number of commissars and great
panjandrums of the Soviet régime, and by the time we reached Kharkov I
believed he was thoroughly convinced that any real arrest of myself
would plunge Russia and Europe and the United States into a world war.
- For he decided to accompany me to a foreign consulate in Kharkov
and he left me at the doorstep, while I, rejoicing at my freedom bade
him a polite farewell – an anti-climax but a welcome one.
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- “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. Jones had a conscientious streak in his make-up which
took him on a secret journey into the Ukraine and a brief walking tour
through its countryside. That same streak was to take him a few years
later into the interior of China during political disturbances, and was
to cost him his life at the hands of Chinese military bandits. An
earnest and meticulous little man, Gareth Jones was the sort who carries
a note-book and unashamedly records your words as you talk. Patiently he
went from one correspondent to the next, asking questions and writing
down the answers...”
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- Gareth was then immediately & personally denigrated as a liar by the
then Pulitzer Prize winner, Walter Duranty, who wrote:
- “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.”
- …“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.”
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- …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.”
- …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.
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- Snubbed by Lloyd George and London Intelligentsia.
- 1933-34 - Worked as local reporter for Cardiff Western Mail primarily on
domestic stories.
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- June 1934 – Meets Randolph Hearst at his Welsh Castle, St. Donats,
Cardiff – invited to meet again in St. Simeon, California.
- January 1st 1935 – Personally commissioned to repeat famine
observations for Hearst; given carte blanche to write some of the most
vitriolic attacks on the Stalinist regime whilst being equally
heart-rending.
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- 5 articles published in Hearst
Press commencing 18 February 1935 relating Walker’s observations of a
continuing 1934 Ukrainian famine & illustrated with secretly taken
photographs from his own camera.
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- Louis Fischer in a published
letter The Nation, which showed that:
- Walker’s photos were from different seasons
- Some photos from 1921 famine
- Thomas Walker according to unverified Soviet-supplied records to
Fischer, was only in Moscow for five days in Autumn 1934 and therefore
could never have visited Ukraine.
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- And by this letter Fischer
effectively…
- Destroyed the credibility of the American ‘Conservative’ press’
allegations of any Soviet famine in the 1930s.
- Without ever mentioning Gareth’s name or even attacking his articles
directly – Gareth’s truthful observations were tarnished by the same
brush.
- [Gareth was ‘conveniently’ incommunicado when Fischer’s letter was
published & therefore unable to contribute to the controversy.
Unbeknowingly, he had just departed Japan & coincidentally from
Gunther Stein’s freely-given accommodation; who later allowed his Tokyo
rooms to be used by Soviet ‘Super’ spy, Richard Sorge, for covert radio
transmissions to Moscow…]
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- Gareth embarks on fact-finding mission of Japanese Expansionism of their
puppet state of Manchukuo, in Northern China after interviewing
political leaders in Tokyo.
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- German Company, Wostwag kindly supplied vehicle for an extended trip
into Inner Mongolia to witness the Japanese presence in the area.
- Invite from German Journalist Dr Herbert Mueller.
- Gareth assured “Absolutely safe, no bandits”.
- After kidnapping, Mueller released after two days as captive – unusual…
- Ransom obdurately rejected by bandits – unusual…
- Gareth eventually, tragically murdered after two weeks on eve of 30th
birthday -12 Aug 1935.
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- London publication by Marxist, Claud Cockburn, in The Week claimed that
Dr. Mueller was released because of secret Japanese-German Entente
Cordiale Pact.
- The British Foreign Office then instigated 500 page investigation into
this specific allegation and concluded; no foundation whatsoever
- No mention of Gareth’s Soviet ban or famine reporting in whole report.
- The Soviet Union were never considered as possibly being culpable
despite…
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- Wostwag were major organ of Soviet NKVD:
- The General Manager in China, Adam Purpiss according to Chase Manhattan
records was: “considered one of
the shrewdest and cleverest men in Far East,” and “at one time
associated with the Cheka.”
- Purpiss travelled under a invalid Honduran Passport.
- Wostwag were allegedly ‘de facto’ bankers and arms dealers to Chinese
Communist Party.
- Banked $900,000 into Chase Manhattan Bank, NYC, in 1938 for purchase of
aeroplanes.
- Sole monopoly for trade in Outer Mongolia – 50% profits went to Moscow
State bank.
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- 34-year dossier from 1917 to 1951 relating his Soviet sympathies:
- Lived at one time in Soviet consol at Hankow.
- Alleged to have had assumed several aliases.
- Known member of the Comitern.
- Ran a Soviet courier business in China.
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- MI5 never passed on relevant intelligence to F.O. for their enquiry,
even though:
- Sir Vernon Kell, founder and Director General of MI5, told US
intelligence he knew of Wostwag’s financial tie-up with the Soviet
Security Services back in 1929.
- Mueller’s 34 year dossier from 1917 was active at the time in 1935.
- If they had, then their conclusions may well have been different… As it
was, the F.O armed only with Marxist Cockburn’s allegations of a
Japanese-German pact, weren’t even on the ‘scent’ of any Soviet
complicity…
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- The embarrassment to the Japanese by being publicly implicated with
Gareth’s murder in Mueller’s German articles resulted in effectively no
further territorial expansion of their Chinese ‘empire’ until the ‘Rape
of Nanking’ in 1937 – allowing Wostwag to continue to ‘operate covertly’
& trade profitably without hindrance.
- As a likely ‘marked’ enemy of the Soviet State for his Holodomor
reporting, liquidation of Gareth by NKVD operatives in Inner Mongolia
would certainly not have displeased the Moscow hierarchy. And not least
of all, by former Chekist, Foreign Commissar Litvinov, who clearly was
incensed by Gareth’s affront to embarrassingly expose the Holodomor ten
days after affording him the privilege of a personal interview in
Moscow…
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- One person who may not have been fooled by the explanation of Gareth’s
death simply at the hands of miscreant bandits, would have been Orwell…
- Though, the English ‘Farmer Jones’ character in Animal Farm obviously
alludes to Tsar Nicholas, who was murdered by the Soviets, there is now
reason to believe that Gareth may perhaps have been behind the actual
choice of naming Mr Jones, the Farmer:
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- Chapter 6 of Animal Farm relates to the Holodomor and clear reference to
Duranty’s “death’s due to malnutrition” article is alluded to with; “Nine
hens had died in the meantime. Their bodies were buried in the orchard,
and it was given out that they had died of coccidiosis.“
- In fact, Duranty’s infamous article referred to “Mr. Jones” on four separate occasions, and likewise
Orwell never once refers to ‘Farmer Jones’, but always “Mr Jones – the
farmer”.
- Duranty was not trusted by Orwell as he was cited in his controversial
crypto-Communist list.
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- In his 1945 ‘Prevention of Literature’ essay, Orwell suggested placing
the word ‘don’t’ before each stanza of the below heretical poem to bring
it up to date:
- Dare to be a Daniel
- Dare to stand alone
- Dare to have a purpose firm
- Dare to make it known
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- In June 1938, Orwell reviewed Eugene Lyons’ “Assignment in Utopia” for The
New English Weekly, [in which he would later take the Soviet 5-year plan
Slogan 2+2=5 for use in 1984] and therefore would have been aware that:
- Moscow American Journalists, at the wishes of the Soviet Press Censor,
colluded to damn Jones as a liar.
- That Gareth’s “conscientious
streak” led him to murdered by Chinese bandits two years after exposing
the Holodomor.
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- In his 1945 Proposed Preface to Animal Farm Orwell wrote:
- “…it was considered equally proper to publicise famines when they
happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine.
And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is
certainly no better now.”
- Though readers of Orwell, including biographer David Taylor, believe
this hypothesis relating to Gareth to be ‘plausible enough’, and that
Orwell could not have written on the Holodomor with out knowledge of
Gareth, it is almost ‘Orwellian’ in itself, that Orwell archives &
papers contain no mention whatsoever of Gareth Jones!
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- On Friday 16th August, upon hearing of Gareth’s murder, Lloyd
George commented in The London Evening Standard:
- “I was struck with horror when the news of poor Mr Gareth Jones was
conveyed to me. I was uneasy
about his fate from the moment I ascertained that when his companion, Dr
Herbert Müller, was released he was detained.”
- “That part of the world is a cauldron of conflicting intrigue and one or
other interests concerned probably knew that Mr Gareth Jones knew too
much of what was going on…
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- He had a passion for finding out what was happening in foreign lands
wherever there was trouble, and in pursuit of his investigations he
shrank from no risk.”
- “…I had always been afraid that he would take one risk too many. Nothing escaped his observation, and
he allowed no obstacle to turn from his course when he thought that
there was some fact, which he could obtain.
- He had the almost unfailing knack of getting at things that mattered.”
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- Historical tri-lingual plaque Gareth was unveiled at The University of
Wales, inscribed: ,
- “In Memory of Gareth Richard Vaughn Jones, born 1905, who graduated from
the University of Aberystwyth and the University of Cambridge. One of
the first journalists to report on the Holodomor, the Great Famine of
1932-33 in the Soviet Ukraine.”
- With thanks to the UCCLA, the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches of Great
Britain and of Canada, the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain,
the Ukrainian American Civil Liberties Association, and other donors,
the bronze plaque is adorned with a bas relief of Gareth Jones, prepared
by Toronto sculptor, Oleh Lesiuk.
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- Thank you for the kind invitation & opportunity to speak to you
today, about Gareth Jones…
- Nigel Colley
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Notes
