Unsung Hero of Ukraine

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The Man Who Knew Too Much

Unsung Hero of Ukraine

Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones

1905 – 1935

Killed in Inner Mongolia

on the eve of his 30th birthday

John Hughes

1815-1889 Founder Of Hughesovka. Now the City of Donetsk

Annie Gwen Jones with Arthur

Hughes and his family.

Hughesovka 1889 – 1892,

Annie Gwen was tutor the Hughes children

and left Ukraine on account of Cholera riots

Gareth with his mother, Annie Gwen Jones

Rt. Hon David Lloyd George, Former Prime Minister of Great Britain Gareth’s first employer.

Gareth gained First Class Honours at Cambridge University in French, German and Russian which he spoke fluently

Gareth was an expert on Soviet affairs.

1. He was an eyewitness to the genocide-famine in Ukraine.
2. He wrote as many as 50 articles on the problems in the USSR.
3. He lectured widely after being unable to have any more articles published.
4. In an endeavour to promote the genocide-famine he directly or indirectly suffered the ultimate sacrifice.

Gareth’s Three Visits to Ukraine and Soviet Union

1. First visit in August 1930.
Following this visit articles by Gareth were published in the London Times entitled The Two Russias and the The Western Mail.
2.Second visit in 1931 with Jack Heinz II
Articles-The Real Russia were published in the London Times and Jack Heinz II published Experiences in Russia-1931.
3. Third and final visit in 1933.
Articles by Gareth were in the Western Mail, The Daily Express and the Financial News. On this occasion The Times did not publish any.




Gareth with Jack Heinz II made a second visit to the Soviet Union and Ukraine for six weeks Jack Heinz published a small book taken from Gareth’s diaries entitled Experiences in Russia-1931 A Diary Anonymous
	Gareth visited a German Commune near Dneiperstroy and was told: They sent the kulaks away from here and it was terrible. We heard in a letter that ninety children died on the way - ninety children from this district. We are all afraid of being sent away as kulaks for political reasons. We had a letter from one, saying they were cutting wood in Siberia. Life was hard and there was not enough to eat. It was forced labour! They sent all the grain away from our village and left only 1,000 pounds. I heard that in a village thirty versts away they came to seize the grain, and the peasants killed three militiamen. They wanted to have enough grain for themselves instead of starving. The Communists then shot sixteen peasants
















Metrovik Show Trial The Show Trial of the Metrovick engineers from April 12th - 19th 1933 was a manufactured act to distract attention from the crisis of the Famine that was devastating the Soviet Union and Ukraine. Six British Engineers and a number of Soviet citizens were accused of ‘wilfully wrecking the Soviet electrical industry and of plotting military espionage and bribery’.


The Denigration of Gareth Jones. Duranty’s Rebuttal 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 espionagey Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs . The Moscow Correspondents were called upon to accuse Gareth of lying about the Famine. Throwing down Jones was as unpleasant a chore as fell to any of us in years of juggling facts to please dictatorial regimes.	Gareth's Many Articles On Gareth’s return from the Soviet Union he published at least 20 articles. His last article was “Goodbye Russia” in the London Daily Express. He lectured at the Royal Institute of International Affairs on March 30th and he later gave many lectures throughout Britain including Rotary.


	German Consul from Kharkiv 0n Sunday May 28, 1933 The German Consul in Kharkoff and his wife thought that my Russian articles gave a wonderful picture, but that it was really much worse than I described it. Since March, it has got so much worse that it is horrible to be in Kharkoff. So many die, ill and beggars. They are dying off in the villages, he said, and the spring sowing campaign is catastrophic. The peasants have been eating the seed. To talk of a bumper crop, as Molotoff did, was a tragic farce, and he only said that to keep their spirits up, but nobody believed Molotoff. Many villages are empty. The fate of the German colonists is terrible, in some villages 25% have died off, and there will be more dying off until August. In August he said there would be an epidemic of deaths, because hungry peasants would suddenly eat so much as to kill themselves.,