Gareth Jones
[bas relief by Oleh Lesiuk]
HOME |
Stop Press |
Complete Soviet Articles & Background Information |
Précis of Gareth's
|
All Published Articles |
BOOKS
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
TOPICAL
'Are you Listening NYT?' U.N. Speech - Nov 2009 |
Gareth Recognised at Cambridge - Nov 2009 |
Reporter and the Genocide - Rome, March 2009 |
Order of Freedom Award -Nov 2008 |
Premiere of 'The Living' Documentary Kyiv - Nov 2008 |
Gareth Jones 'Famine' Diaries - Chicago 2008 |
Aberystwyth Memorial Plaque 2006 |
GENERAL
Scholarship Fund |
Site Map |
Links |
Legal Notices |
Sponsored Links |
Contact |
Gareth Jones Interview NHTTP/1.1 100 Continue otes
with Commissar Maxim Litvinov
March 1933
Below is a copy of Gareth Jones actual diary notes of his late March 1933 confidential interview in Moscow with Maxim Litvinov, after just returning from his unescorted trip to Ukraine, where Gareth observed the famine, firsthand..
It is historically significant as Gareth 'subtly' broaches the subject of famine in the villages, whilst in conversation about new freedom of Soviet playwrights to write without censorship... And as such, from the mouth of Litvinov, is probably the highest level of a famine denial by any Soviet official, as he was arguably second only to Stalin in political power..
[FYI - Gareth used a similar technique of interviewing two years later, when he asked the Japanese War Minister General Hayashi, "Some Chinese fear that Japan will attack North China. Has this fear any basis?" - further details click here]
Transcript & Interpretation
Artistic Realisation
[For one interpretation of the title's relevance, then please click HERE, where the Artistic Realisation Organisation describes it as the creative "liberation lies in the power of Art, not as therapy or recreation, but as a critical means of articulate self-expression".]
"Give us books for new readers, true books, with living truth". [Presumably some current Soviet edict or slogan]
GJ [Gareth Jones]:
“Would describe famine in villages?”
L [itvinov]: “Well,
there is no famine.”
L: “Well, a gun would shoot shell far. You must take a longer view. The present hunger is temporary. In writing books you must have a longer view. It would be difficult to describe it as hunger.”
Prevarication
[footnote at bottom of first page - presumably summing
up GJ's thoughts on Litvinov's reply]
See Hamlet
[It is my opinion that GJ is
ironically and sarcastically making a personal reference to Hamlet's main
"To be or not to be" soliloquy {Quarto One}: "The taste of
hunger or a tyrant's reign, And thosand more calamaties besides," - Click
here for relevant link to Hamlet soliloquy - Nevertheless, the
play
was banned by the Soviet Censor for "Hamlet's indecisiveness and
depression were incompatible with the new Soviet spirit of optimism, fortitude,
and clarity") (Click
Here for reference)]
Great respect for:
There are few party writers.
- - - - - -
In my mind with Gareth's above use of "Prevarication", he was clearly contemptuous of Litvinov's denial, which he later evinced in his strongly underlined "See Hamlet" comment, possibly as a scholarly reference to Shakespeare's own take on tyranny and famine .- which was banned by the Soviet Censor for "Hamlet's indecisiveness and depression were incompatible with the new Soviet spirit of optimism, fortitude, and clarity") (Click Here for full reference)