Gareth Jones
[bas relief by Oleh Lesiuk]
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Chicago American
Monday February 25, 1935
[These Thomas Walker Articles in the Hearst press are completely fraudulent
propaganda and are included for academic purposes only .
Click Here for a personal hypothesis over
exactly whose propaganda?]
SIX MILLION PERISH IN SOVIET FAMINE
Peasants’ Crops Seized, They and Their Animals Starve
Reporter Risks Life to Get Photographs Showing Starvation
STARVATION stalks through the Ukraine section of Soviet Russia, leaving a ghastly trail of death and agony.
The Ukraine is the most fertile grain-producing district in Russia.
The facts contained in the series of articles, of which this is the firs, were obtained by Thomas Walker, an American newspaperman, now resident in London, at the peril of his life.
When Mr. Walker entered Russia last spring he smuggled in a camera.
While the photographs shown with these articles were obtained under the most adverse and dangerous possible circumstances, the evidence they present is more grim and graphic than words.
By THOMAS WALKER
Noted Journalist and Traveler and Student of Russian Affairs, Who for Several Years Has Toured the Union of Soviet Republics.
I have recently toured the Ukraine district of Soviet Russia, where 6,000,000 peasants have perished from starvation in the past eighteen months, due to the excessive tolls made on their crops by the Bolshevik government.
Last Winter, Red Army soldiers, under orders from Moscow, took so much of the season’s crops from the peasants that they were unable to feed themselves and their livestock through the Winter.
Photographs accompanying this series of articles were taken at great risk and brought out of Russia in my pockets. Fortunately, I was not searched. I threw away my camera before coming to the border, so as not to arouse the suspicions of the Russian customs officials regarding photographs. The Soviet travel regulations distinctly state all camera films are to be developed within the U.S.S.R., and pictures detrimental to the Bolshevik cause are destroyed and the owner of the films arrested
Meets Immigrants.
(Run Model Farm)
Starting from Moscow late in the Spring of 1934 on what was advertised by the Intourist Travel Bureau as a complete tour of the Ukraine, we first went to a large Collective Farm near Tambov. Honesty compels me to state that this was indeed a model farm.
Conversation with the workers on this farm established the facts that practically all these people were immigrant Communists from either America, England or Germany, who had eve brought their farming implements with them, at their own expense, from abroad.
At the railway station at Veronezh I asked a glib-tongued Intourist guide why so many hundreds of persons were sleeping in the railway station-why were they in rags, and why did they have such agonizing looks on their faces.
To which he replied:
“They were sleeping in the railway station because they were all workers from a factory near-by and are leaving today for their month’s holiday in the Crimea, which also accounts for their old clothing, being on holiday and having sat up all night so as not to miss the train, naturally they looked tired”.
The look of agony and intense misery on all the faces of these misery [sic] did not bespeak of any forthcoming holidays in the Crimea. Questioning a few of these peasants convinced me that we tourists are being shown only the rosy side of a very horrible condition.
I decided to leave the tour as planned by Intourist and start one of my own devising.
Buying a ticket to Belgorod and traveling only with a small bog Russian make so as not to attract attention, I arrived there early in the morning. I set out to walk the six kilometers to the Collective Farm.
Peasants, Horses Starve
(Death on Highway)
About halfway out I came upon a party of three peasants and three horses in varying stages of starvation (see photograph). One peasant had the night previous. One horse had just died another laid down that was too weak to get on its legs again.
These peasants stated that they had been at the Collective Farm several days previous and had begged the officials for some wheat straw to feed the horses and to be allowed to fill their water barrels. Both requests were refused, and they were ordered away from the farm at the point of revolvers.
These peasants told me they had raised enough grain the year previous to more than supply the needs of themselves and their live stock, but the Red soldiers had come under the auspices of the GPU, and requisitioned practically all the harvest.
Two of the peasants were married and had children, who perished by starvation during the year 1932-33. I left them as they started to butcher the dead horse.
In this connection it may be interesting to state that over tem million horses have perished in Soviet Russia since 1929. Most of these animals had belonged to independent peasants.
Recently, however, trials have been held in Moscow and Smolensk, attempting to fix the blame on the managers of certain Bolshevik stock farms for the starvation of thousands of Russia’s prize horses.
Search for Grain
(‘A Great Privilege’)
The collective farm near Belgorod is a concentration camp of forced labor, and in these drastic times in this section it is deemed a privilege to be a prisoner on this farm. Supervision on this farm is by red Army soldiers, who carry loaded rifles and shoot to kill. They guard the planting, growing, harvesting and storage of the grain.
As a great privilege, peasants were permitted to pick up the grains of wheat that fell on the ground during the process of Spring sowing.
Food Hunter Shot
(Red Bullets Fly)
Walking around this farm I came upon two peasant women who were picking up grains of wheat after the manner of barnyard fowl under the most dirty conditions imaginable (See photograph.)
They were distinctly forbidden to take any of the wheat that was outside of certain limits.
A father and son had been busy picking up these grains of wheat when apparently the father came too close to the prohibited territory to suit a Red soldier and was promptly shot in the back by a guard without warning and left to die where he fell. (See photograph).
Both father and son were employed on this farm at the time
Continued on Page 16, Column 6.
PHOTO CAPTIONS
PHOTO 1 (Top Left)
Caption:
Like barnyard fowl, two peasant women garner kernels of grain in sowing. They must do this to keep alive in a land of plenty – the Ukraine – where 6,000,000 children. Women and men have died of starvation. The women were permitted, as a great privilege, to pick the kernels.
PHOTO 2 (Top Right)
Caption:
Russia’s beautiful thoroughbred horses, known the world over, are used now in the agricultural districts. The animals, needed on every farm, are dying off by the million of starvation. Tem million died in a few years. Here one horse is dead; another is too weak to stand. Peasants begging food to save their livestock were driven off by armed soldiers.
PHOTO 3 (Bottom - Middle)) Left)
Caption:
In this article describing the enforced famine in the Ukraine, Thomas Walker tells of finding this little Russian peasant boy standing beside his dying father and weeping bitterly. The father had been shot for approaching too closely to forbidden territory while the two were picking up grains of wheat spilled on the ground. Now the boy must wander alone, almost certainly to die.
PHOTO 4 (Bottom Right)
Caption:
Death from starvation in a Soviet hay cart! Although he worked on a community farm where food was plentiful, this peasant could not get enough to eat to keep life in his body. Weary from his forced labor, he crawled into this hay cart to find rest. His eyes closed-and never opened again.
(All Pictures Copyright, 1935, by American Newspapers, Inc.)
DIAGRAM 1 (Map -very bottom left)
Caption:
The map shows the famine-stricken Ukraine district and Tamboff and Veronezh, mentioned in Mr. Walker’s article.
To cross-reference these photos with Walker's articles for Hearst, please CLICK HERE
To cross-reference these photos with Ammende's Muss Russland Hungern?, please CLICK HERE
To cross-reference these photos with those appearing in August 1934 in The Daily Express, please CLICK HERE
To cross-reference these photos with Ammende's Human Life In Russia, please CLICK HERE
Click here for a discussion hypothesis over whether Walker was in fact a Soviet Patsy rather than a Hearst Stooge?
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