|
1
|
|
|
2
|
|
|
3
|
- Part 1 – Who Was Gareth Jones?
- Early Life / Education / Credentials.
- Part 2 – With Lloyd George & 3 Visits to the USSR
- Personal Diaries, Letters & Newspaper Articles of his Eyewitness
Observations of Ukrainian Famine Conditions in 1930, 31 & 33.
- Part 3 – Exposing & Covering-up of a Famine
- Denigration by Walter Duranty in The New York Times in 1933.
- Gareth’s Forgotten Role in Randolph Hearst’s ‘Famine’ in 1935.
- Gareth & Duranty cited in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
- Part 4 – Shooting the Messenger; A Man Who Knew Too Much?
- Mysteriously Murdered by Japanese-Controlled Chinese Bandits (or Soviet
Retribution)?
- Part 5 – Conclusion & Recent recognition
- Memorial Plaque - Aberystwyth, Wales, 2006
- Order of Merit, London, 2008
- Sergiy Bukovsky’s The Living, 2008 & the future…
|
|
4
|
- Mother, Former Governess to Arthur Hughes’ family between 1889-92,
founder of Hughesovka (now Donetsk).
- Father, Headmaster Barry County Grammar School.
|
|
5
|
- 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.
|
|
6
|
- 1922-26 – 1st Class Honours Degree in French & German from
Aberystwyth University, Wales.
- 1926 – Won Exhibition 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.
|
|
7
|
- In 1929, Wall Street Crash sparks off World Economic Depression &
Unemployment
- Gareth is introduced to Former Great World War One British Prime
Minister David Lloyd George.
- Appointed Foreign Affairs Advisor to Elderly Lloyd George Jan 1st
1930.
|
|
8
|
- Visits USSR for 1st time as the eyes & the ears of the
Lloyd George, but with an ‘open mind’ about Communism in August 1930.
- After ‘red carpet’ treatment in Moscow, he makes unescorted visit to
Ukraine as pilgrimage to Donetz, where his mother lived in the 1880s.
- There, he discovered deplorable conditions of ‘oppression, injustice
& misery of the workers’
& a complete scarcity of food…
|
|
9
|
|
|
10
|
- “…foreign delegations [are] blissfully ignorant of the hunger,
discontent, opposition, and hatred.”
- “…Donetz Basin [in Ukraine], 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.”
|
|
11
|
- 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 [of Ketchup family fame] on a
month-long ‘unescorted’ visit to USSR in August 1931.
|
|
12
|
- Afterwards, Heinz compiled a privately published & ‘Anonymously
written’ book in spring 1932, entitled: “Experiences of Russia – 1931 –
A Diary”
- Compiled primarily from Gareth’s own 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…
|
|
13
|
- Gareth signed 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 [editor of
Izvestia].
- 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.”
|
|
14
|
|
|
15
|
- Summer 1932 – Due to Depression, Gareth returns to work in London for Lloyd George; ghosting
his ‘War Memoirs’.
- October 1932 – eminent LSE Professor Jules Menken returns from USSR
(having dined on caviar & drunk fine wines in the Kremlin with
Commissars) & tells Gareth that he; ‘dreaded this winter, when he
thought millions would die of hunger’.
- Gareth immediately penned two articles for the Cardiff Western Mail
published on Oct 15 & 17, 1932 to highlight the tragic situation
entitled; “Will there be Soup?”
- In line with his Welsh Non-Conformist beliefs & British Liberal
views; Gareth decided to make a trip, at his first opportunity to view
the conditions first-hand – otherwise it could be officially denied.
|
|
16
|
- 5th March 1933 Arrives in Moscow, talks to diplomats, etc.
- 10th March fills rucksack with food (from foreign currency
store); sneaks out of Moscow by local train towards Ukraine.
- Crosses Ukraine border by foot, walks along snowy railway for 2-days,
stopping-off & sleeping in villages en route.
- Then ‘escorted’ by OGPU to German Consul in Kharkiv,
- Makes diary notes of his off-limits trips’ observations of raging famine
conditions & recording, the woeful tales of peasants.
- These unique diaries now represent probably the only ‘Independent
Western Verification of the Holodomor’.
- Extracts of these diaries are interwoven into Sergiy Bukovsky’s
documentary ‘The Living’… But here is a brief excerpt:
|
|
17
|
|
|
18
|
|
|
19
|
|
|
20
|
|
|
21
|
|
|
22
|
|
|
23
|
- “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...”
|
|
24
|
|
|
25
|
|
|
26
|
- On emerging from Russia, Jones made a statement which, startling though
it sounded, was little more than a summary of what the correspondents
and foreign diplomats had told him. To protect us… he emphasized his
Ukrainian foray rather than our conversations as the chief source of his
information.
- In any case… with preparations under way for the [sabotage] trial of
the British [Metrovik] engineers, the need to remain on friendly terms
with the [Soviet press] censors … was for all of us [Moscow Journalists]
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… Poor Gareth Jones must have been the most surprised human
being alive when the facts he so painstakingly garnered from our mouths
were snowed under by our denials.
|
|
27
|
- “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' 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 no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is
widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.”
|
|
28
|
|
|
29
|
- …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.
|
|
30
|
|
|
31
|
|
|
32
|
- Snubbed by Lloyd George (for using his name to give credence by
association to Gareth’s famine allegations) and also by London
Intelligentsia.
- 1933-34 - Worked as local reporter for Cardiff Western Mail, initially
on stories relating to Welsh traditional arts & crafts.
|
|
33
|
- June 1934 – Meets US Press Baron, Randolph Hearst at his Welsh Castle,
St. Donats, Cardiff – invited to meet again in St. Simeon, California.
- January 1st 1935 – Personally commissioned to repeat 1933
famine observations for Hearst; given carte blanche to write some of the
most vitriolic attacks on the Stalinist regime whilst being equally
heart-rending.
|
|
34
|
|
|
35
|
- One month later - 5 articles published in American Hearst Press
commencing 18 February 1935 relating journalist ‘Thomas Walker’s’
observations of a continuing 1934 Ukrainian famine & illustrated
with secretly taken photographs from his own camera.
|
|
36
|
|
|
37
|
- Marxist, Louis Fischer in a published ‘open’ letter to Hearst in
left-wing mag’, The Nation, showed that:
- Walker’s photos were from different seasons.
- Some photos from 1921 famine.
- Thomas Walker according to Soviet-supplied records to Fischer, could
never have visited Ukraine.
- Not only were all Walker’s photos & articles bogus… Even Walker,
himself turned out to be a fake! But whose fake was he? Hearst’s or
Stalin’s? Hearst had a reputation for not allowing a good story get in
the way of the facts, but consider this…
|
|
38
|
- March 1935 – Fischer letter also asked Hearst to provide facsimile of
Walker’s passport.
- June 1935 – Walker deported from UK to USA.
- July 1935 – Walker re-arrested under real name Green – charged with
passport fraud – found to be a 14-year escaped convict for forgery from
Colorado jail.
- July 1935 – At trial, Walker claimed he had been expelled from USSR in
1930 for attempting to help ‘Whiteguardsman’ escape country.
|
|
39
|
- How did Fisher know Walker was travelling on a false passport, three
months before his London arrest?
- Was he informed by the Soviets, who also supplied him with Walker's
‘supposed’ 1934 USSR travel dates?
- And, who tipped off the British authorities?
- --------------------------------------------------------
- Would Walker dared to visit USSR again in 1934, after being
expelled in 1930 for sake of just 5 Hearst articles?
- Wasn’t Journalism a bit of a risky ‘public’ profession for an escaped
convict?
- Was he perhaps ‘hiding’ from US authorities, whilst in a Soviet Gulag,
from where he was supplied with plausible articles and photos, &
recruited to dupe Hearst?
|
|
40
|
- Fischer’s letter combined with Walker’s subsequent (re)arrest
effectively, for half a century…
- Cast Doubt on the credibility of the Worldwide ‘Conservative’ press’
allegations of any Soviet famine in the 1930s.
- Furthermore, in 1933, when Gareth claimed millions were dying, Fischer
then scoffed: “Who counted them? How could anyone march through a
country count a million people?”
- But in 1935, without ever mentioning Gareth’s name or even attacking
his 1935 articles directly – Gareth’s eyewitness observations of 1933 were tarnished
by the same brush as Walker’s & was never be able to defend his
reputation, as he did with Duranty in March 1933.
- In fact, both Gareth’s deeds and articles were almost completely
forgotten for 70 years, bar obliquely by one man, namely George Orwell
with Gareth as a ‘human being’ in Animal Farm. And, possibly his ‘Mr
Jones, the farmer’?
|
|
41
|
- Back in 1938, Orwell reviewed Lyons’ ‘Assignment in Utopia, which became
one of his primary sources for both Animal Farm and 1984. For instance,
Orwell uses the 1984 Newspeak slogan 2+2=5, which referred to completing the Soviet
5-year plan in just 4 years.
- Orwell wrote in AF: “Starvation seemed to stare them in the face. It was vitally necessary to conceal
this fact from the outside world. Emboldened by the collapse of the
windmill, the human beings were inventing fresh lies about Animal Farm.
Once again it was being put about that all the animals were dying of
famine and disease..."
- Gareth through exposing the famine, is without doubt, one of the ‘Human
Beings’ inventing the fresh lies…
- However, was Gareth ‘The Human Being’? Lyons wrote: ‘Poor Gareth Jones
must have been the most surprised human being alive when the facts he so
painstakingly garnered from our mouths were snowed under by our denials”
|
|
42
|
- Orwell also parodied Walter Duranty’s famine 1933 NYT denial of; ‘There’s
No Starvation, but …Diseases Due to Malnutrition’ - which was also the opening sentence
in Lyons’ Chapter; ‘The Press Corps Conceals a Famine’
- Orwell wrote in AF: 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.
- The ‘Nine hens’ possibly refers to Orwell’s estimate of 9 million, but
the hens are definitely Ukrainians.
- And coccidiosis is a disease specific only to chickens.
|
|
43
|
- Was Gareth, Orwell’s Mr Jones the Farmer?
- In Orwell’s allegory, most of characters were chosen carefully:
- Napoleon (pig) = Stalin; Squealer = Propaganda/Pravda; Boxer (strong
horse) = 1900 Boxer Rebellion of ‘super-human’ Chinese martial artists.
- So why Mr Jones – who clearly alludes to Tsar Nicholas? AF is set on an
English farm – so why not Mr Smith, as Jones is a popular Welsh name? Or
Farmer Guinness as his Farmer was an alcoholic?
- Leading Orwellian Biographer, David Taylor considered the possibility; ‘plausible
enough, although there's no mention of him in the index to GO's
collected (twenty volume) works. Orwell had a habit of picking up names
from the world around him…
|
|
44
|
- Orwellian website Orwelltoday.com considered: ‘Why Orwell hadn't talked
about or written about Gareth Jones? [However, they believed that]…
Orwell had mentioned Gareth Jones after all in the character of Farmer
Jones in Animal Farm! Just like how the Communists had killed the Tsar
and all his family, so too had the Communists just as ruthlessly and
cruelly killed Gareth Jones’.
- One wonders; did Orwell from his personal experience of Barcelona in
1936, suspect that from Lyons’ account, that Gareth’s murder in China
was not the simple act of banditry?
- Unfortunately, we may never know… Perhaps the evidence was destroyed,
when a V2 rocket fell on Orwell’s home in London in WW2 but…
|
|
45
|
|
|
46
|
- Spring 1935
- At the time of Walkers’ ‘bogus’ articles, Gareth was effectively
‘incommunicado’ having embarked on fact-finding mission of the Far East.
- After interviewing the Japanese Minister of War in Tokyo, he decided
to visit Inner Mongolia to investigate the Military Expansionism of the
Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo across Northern China…
|
|
47
|
- German Company, Wostwag of Kalgan in North China, ‘kindly’ supplied a
free vehicle to make an extended trip into Inner Mongolia to witness
imminent Japanese territorial expansion.
|
|
48
|
- Invited on trip by German Journalist, Dr Herbert Mueller.
- Gareth assured by Mueller; “Absolutely Safe, No Bandits”.
- After kidnapping, Mueller unusually released after two days as captive,
and
- gave the only account of the episode, claiming the Japanese instigated
the kidnap by putting them on the wrong road.
- $8000 Ransom later rejected by bandits …
- Gareth was tragically murdered after two weeks on very eve of his 30th
birthday -12 Aug 1935 …
|
|
49
|
|
|
50
|
- In the Foreign Office’s 500-page report; they concluded that Gareth’s
murder put down to the act of a miscreant Chinese bandit’s bullet…
However:
- Not a single mention of Gareth’s Soviet ban or any of his famine
reporting in whole report.
- The Soviet Union were never once considered as possibly being culpable despite
….
|
|
51
|
- Dr Herbert Mueller, German journalist was:
- A known Soviet Comitern [Communist International] agent
- Secret British dossier on his Communist activities from 1917-1951
- Lived in the Soviet Consol at Hankow
- Adams Purpiss of Wostwag, ‘The King of the Kalgan’, who gave Gareth free
transport, was:
- Head of a major covert arm of Soviet NKVD in China
- Allegedly, ‘de facto’ bankers and arms dealers to Chinese Communist
Party
- Deposited 50% of profits to Moscow & in 1937, $900,000 in NYC,
Chase Manhattan.
- According to US Intelligence he was; ’one of the shrewdest and
cleverest men in the Far East’.
|
|
52
|
- Japanese implication with Gareth’s 1935 murder by Mueller’s articles
resulted in no further territorial expansion until the ‘Rape of Nanking’
in 1937, arguably the start of WWII.
- Allowing NKVD Wostwag to continue to supply weapons to [Chinese
Communist leader] Mao on his ‘Long March’.
|
|
53
|
- Japanese implication with Gareth’s 1935 murder by Mueller’s articles
resulted in no further territorial expansion until the ‘Rape of Nanking’
in 1937, arguably the start of WWII.
- Allowing NKVD Wostwag to continue to supply weapons to [Chinese
Communist leader] Mao on his ‘Long March’.
- Why did ‘Shrewd’ Purpiss of Wostwag afford a free lift to Gareth, a
known enemy of the Bolsheviks?
- Liquidation of Gareth by NKVD operatives would certainly have pleased
former Chekist, Foreign Commissar Litvinov, personally incensed by
Gareth’s affront to expose the Holodomor, during delicate negotiations
of diplomatic recognition with USA.
|
|
54
|
- 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…
|
|
55
|
- “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…”
- “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.”
|
|
56
|
|
|
57
|
- Gareth’s diaries probably represent the only independent Western
verification of Stalin’s Ukrainian
famine-genocide.
- His Soviet articles were arguably the most accurate reporting of 5-year
plan – for which Soviets tried hard to suppress.
- With his murder, the only reliable western witness to the Holodomor had
been silenced…
- He was probably the only Welsh Victim of the Holodomor, but definitely a
“Man Who Knew Too Much”, but is now, belatedly being rightfully
recognised…
|
|
58
|
|
|
59
|
|
|
60
|
- From the left - Mark Edwards, co-producer; Igor Barba, sound director;
Zhenia Kravchuk, line producer; Sergiy Bukovsky, director; Volodymyr
Kukorenchuk, director of photography on location, London, June 2008.
|
|
61
|
- Thank you to:
- Prof. Federigo Argentieri, the John Cabot University, the Guarini
Institute & the Liberal Foundation
- for the kind invitation & opportunity to speak to you today.
- about my great uncle,
- Gareth Richard Vaughn Jones
- Nigel Linsan Colley
|
Notes
