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Gareth Jones: Eyewitness to the Holodomor
This is the first academic study of Gareth Jones, now recognized as one of the first journalists to reveal the horror of the Holodomor, the Soviet government-induced famine in the early 1930s which killed millions of Ukrainians. Of interest to students of journalism, eastern-European history, and political studies, this book provides a fascinating insight about one of the most devastating events of the 20th century and the social, economic, and political factors that contributed to the famine.
A fluent Russian speaker, Jones travelled as a foreign affairs adviser to David Lloyd George and Ivy Lee, two of the most influential people at that time. The Aberystwyth and Cambridge-educated Jones investigated reports denied by the Soviet government that their Five-Year Plan had led to mass starvation by visiting the affected region and living with the Ukrainian people. Gareth Jones's numerous articles, published in the UK (Evening Standard, Daily Express, and Western Mail), as well as those written about him in the US (New York Evening News and Chicago Daily News), exposed the Holodomor, but Jones's credibility and integrity were immediately attacked and denigrated by the Soviet government and its sympathizers within the journalistic profession, including Walter Duranty of the New York Times.
[Subject: Biography, History, Media Studies, Soviet Studies, Genocide Studies]
A fluent Russian speaker, Jones travelled as a foreign affairs adviser to David Lloyd George and Ivy Lee, two of the most influential people at that time. The Aberystwyth and Cambridge-educated Jones investigated reports denied by the Soviet government that their Five-Year Plan had led to mass starvation by visiting the affected region and living with the Ukrainian people. Gareth Jones's numerous articles, published in the UK (Evening Standard, Daily Express, and Western Mail), as well as those written about him in the US (New York Evening News and Chicago Daily News), exposed the Holodomor, but Jones's credibility and integrity were immediately attacked and denigrated by the Soviet government and its sympathizers within the journalistic profession, including Walter Duranty of the New York Times.
[Subject: Biography, History, Media Studies, Soviet Studies, Genocide Studies]
266 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2013
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October 18, 2021
I hadn’t heard of Gareth Jones until about a year ago, when I watched the film Mr Jones. He was a young Welsh journalist who made three trips to the USSR in 1930, 1931 and 1933, and was one of the first people to publicise the Great Ukrainian Famine, nowadays often referred to as the Holodomor. At the time, Jones’ work was falsely denigrated by pro-communist journalists in the western press, especially Walter Duranty, the chief Moscow correspondent of the New York Times. Duranty’s propaganda on behalf of Stalin earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1932, of which more below.
I have the impression this book was written more for an academic than a general audience, because most of it consists of detailed textual analysis of Jones’ writing – his newspaper articles, letters, and his own journals. I was very interested in the subject matter and so didn’t mind this very analytical approach, but the book may not be to everyone’s taste. This is primarily a book about Gareth Jones and his work, rather than a book about the Holodomor itself.
Prior to travelling to the Soviet Union, Jones admired the theoretical commitments of the USSR to internationalism, workers’ rights and so on, but unlike some of his colleagues he refused to blind himself to the reality of what he saw. After his first trip in 1930, he wrote to his family to say “Russia is in a very bad state, rotten, no food, only bread; oppression, injustice, misery amongst the workers…The government is the most brutal in the world… Many Russians are too weak to work. I am terribly sorry for them.” In 1930 and 1931 it was relatively easy for him to move around the country but by 1933 foreign journalists were not allowed to travel outside Moscow without permission. Jones managed to get permission to travel to Kharkov but slipped off the train at a rural station and then walked for 40 miles through the countryside, staying in peasant huts and seeing for himself the devastation. He correctly identified the famine as man-made, arising from forced collectivisation, the elimination of the “kulak” class, and the forced requisition of grain from the peasants. After his return, he wrote to the Manchester Guardian in May 1933 to appeal “I hope that fellow liberals who boil at any injustices in Germany or Italy or Poland will express just one word of sympathy with the millions of peasants who are victims of persecution and famine in the Soviet Union.” In reality, Jones became the subject of libels from Duranty and others.
The last chapter of the book considers the fact that, despite requests, Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize has never been rescinded. Before reading this book, I was inclined to think it should not be. Of course I considered the award a low point for the Pulitzer, but rescinding it seemed to me to be an attempt to memory-hole history. The author makes the point though, that the refusal to rescind is hurtful to Ukrainian people. A Canadian academic, Lubomyr Luciuk, is quoted “That Walter Duranty was not worthy of the Pulitzer Prize is certain. Why the Holodomor’s murdered millions are not worthy of justice remains unexplained.” The author concludes that the New York Times should publicly acknowledge its own part in disseminating famine denial stories, and that until it does so, it remains as guilty as Duranty himself.
In 1935, Jones went to Manchukuo – Japanese occupied Manchuria – to investigate the situation there. The day before his 30th birthday, he was kidnapped and murdered by Chinese bandits. It’s widely believed that this was arranged by the Soviet NKVD, although the evidence is circumstantial. Doubtless his death contributed to his subsequent obscurity, from which he has only recently emerged. A courageous and honourable man.
I have the impression this book was written more for an academic than a general audience, because most of it consists of detailed textual analysis of Jones’ writing – his newspaper articles, letters, and his own journals. I was very interested in the subject matter and so didn’t mind this very analytical approach, but the book may not be to everyone’s taste. This is primarily a book about Gareth Jones and his work, rather than a book about the Holodomor itself.
Prior to travelling to the Soviet Union, Jones admired the theoretical commitments of the USSR to internationalism, workers’ rights and so on, but unlike some of his colleagues he refused to blind himself to the reality of what he saw. After his first trip in 1930, he wrote to his family to say “Russia is in a very bad state, rotten, no food, only bread; oppression, injustice, misery amongst the workers…The government is the most brutal in the world… Many Russians are too weak to work. I am terribly sorry for them.” In 1930 and 1931 it was relatively easy for him to move around the country but by 1933 foreign journalists were not allowed to travel outside Moscow without permission. Jones managed to get permission to travel to Kharkov but slipped off the train at a rural station and then walked for 40 miles through the countryside, staying in peasant huts and seeing for himself the devastation. He correctly identified the famine as man-made, arising from forced collectivisation, the elimination of the “kulak” class, and the forced requisition of grain from the peasants. After his return, he wrote to the Manchester Guardian in May 1933 to appeal “I hope that fellow liberals who boil at any injustices in Germany or Italy or Poland will express just one word of sympathy with the millions of peasants who are victims of persecution and famine in the Soviet Union.” In reality, Jones became the subject of libels from Duranty and others.
The last chapter of the book considers the fact that, despite requests, Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize has never been rescinded. Before reading this book, I was inclined to think it should not be. Of course I considered the award a low point for the Pulitzer, but rescinding it seemed to me to be an attempt to memory-hole history. The author makes the point though, that the refusal to rescind is hurtful to Ukrainian people. A Canadian academic, Lubomyr Luciuk, is quoted “That Walter Duranty was not worthy of the Pulitzer Prize is certain. Why the Holodomor’s murdered millions are not worthy of justice remains unexplained.” The author concludes that the New York Times should publicly acknowledge its own part in disseminating famine denial stories, and that until it does so, it remains as guilty as Duranty himself.
In 1935, Jones went to Manchukuo – Japanese occupied Manchuria – to investigate the situation there. The day before his 30th birthday, he was kidnapped and murdered by Chinese bandits. It’s widely believed that this was arranged by the Soviet NKVD, although the evidence is circumstantial. Doubtless his death contributed to his subsequent obscurity, from which he has only recently emerged. A courageous and honourable man.
July 15, 2021
Gareth Jones hasn’t been acknowledged adequately in North America and Europe, except in Ukraine. He was a fearless journalist whose early reports of widespread starvation in Ukraine and other parts of the USSR were ignored or discounted during his short life. The NYT, and especially Walter Duranty (useful idiot, access “journalist,” “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs” and Nobel prize recipient), denied the truth of Jones’ eyewitness accounts. Jones was shunned in the upper echelons in his native UK and was “demoralized” by lack of reader response upon publication of his searing articles.
Jones improbably hopped off a train in Ukraine during the height of the Holodomor ( 'to kill by starvation') and interviewed many desperate peasants, undetected for several weeks on foot, knowing he would never be allowed back into the Soviet Union. He would die without recognition, likely at the hands of the NKVD (imo).
The US recognized the Soviet Union at the time of Jones’ reporting. Duranty’s reporting could have helped ease this and/or the Roosevelt Administration did not consider the Holodomor a reason to continue non-recognition.
Jones presented the famine as a result of Stalin’s rapid man-made industrialization and collectivization. Poor climate added to the problems but did not cause the Holodomor. The book doesn’t go much into Stalin retaliating against Ukrainian nationalism. This could be in Jones’ writing. “…[T]he Five-Year Plan’s accomplishment of building factories came only with the destruction of the agricultural, and it is bread that makes factory wheels go round.’”
“Jones correctly predicted what was to happen in the coming years: a series of bad harvests coupled with bitter class hatred, persecution of individual thought and freedom, and crushing of the intelligentsia resulted in one of the worst tragedies of the twentieth century.” The Soviet government also continued to export grain during the this period to keep earning foreign currency, they instituted “unrealistic grain requisitions.”
“By the end of 1932, internal passports were required for travel everywhere in the Soviet Union.” I hadn’t realized that this “propiska” tracking system rose out of the famen as epoole were leaving their homes searching for food.
The Metro-Vickers Affair, triggered by the trial of 6 British engineers working in the Soviet Union, was a destraction from the famine and the fact that the Soviet government was not paying off foreign debt. It seems to have worked on too many gullible(?) foreign correspondents. The Soviet government concurrently blamed the peasants, specifically “kulaks” (supposedly the wealthier peasants who could afford machinery and hired labor, but, in fact, anyone who disagreed with Soviet policies was deemed a “kulak”).
“The extension of force” included “establishing 7,000 new GPU stations ion the villages, the passport system, commissars being sent to the grain regions with punitive powers and the right to enforce labor, factories depriving workers [bread] cards, for one day’s absence, death penalties for stealing, and extension of police power. ‘The fiction that the Party is not the government has disappeared. Force has come out in the open.’”
Ample source notes at the end of each chapter.
Agnieszka Holland’s film, “Mr. Jones” is worth viewing.
Jones improbably hopped off a train in Ukraine during the height of the Holodomor ( 'to kill by starvation') and interviewed many desperate peasants, undetected for several weeks on foot, knowing he would never be allowed back into the Soviet Union. He would die without recognition, likely at the hands of the NKVD (imo).
The US recognized the Soviet Union at the time of Jones’ reporting. Duranty’s reporting could have helped ease this and/or the Roosevelt Administration did not consider the Holodomor a reason to continue non-recognition.
Jones presented the famine as a result of Stalin’s rapid man-made industrialization and collectivization. Poor climate added to the problems but did not cause the Holodomor. The book doesn’t go much into Stalin retaliating against Ukrainian nationalism. This could be in Jones’ writing. “…[T]he Five-Year Plan’s accomplishment of building factories came only with the destruction of the agricultural, and it is bread that makes factory wheels go round.’”
“Jones correctly predicted what was to happen in the coming years: a series of bad harvests coupled with bitter class hatred, persecution of individual thought and freedom, and crushing of the intelligentsia resulted in one of the worst tragedies of the twentieth century.” The Soviet government also continued to export grain during the this period to keep earning foreign currency, they instituted “unrealistic grain requisitions.”
“By the end of 1932, internal passports were required for travel everywhere in the Soviet Union.” I hadn’t realized that this “propiska” tracking system rose out of the famen as epoole were leaving their homes searching for food.
The Metro-Vickers Affair, triggered by the trial of 6 British engineers working in the Soviet Union, was a destraction from the famine and the fact that the Soviet government was not paying off foreign debt. It seems to have worked on too many gullible(?) foreign correspondents. The Soviet government concurrently blamed the peasants, specifically “kulaks” (supposedly the wealthier peasants who could afford machinery and hired labor, but, in fact, anyone who disagreed with Soviet policies was deemed a “kulak”).
“The extension of force” included “establishing 7,000 new GPU stations ion the villages, the passport system, commissars being sent to the grain regions with punitive powers and the right to enforce labor, factories depriving workers [bread] cards, for one day’s absence, death penalties for stealing, and extension of police power. ‘The fiction that the Party is not the government has disappeared. Force has come out in the open.’”
Ample source notes at the end of each chapter.
Agnieszka Holland’s film, “Mr. Jones” is worth viewing.
April 13, 2026
I wanted to like this book more than I did.
The story of Gareth Jones and the Holodomor is inherently historically interesting and currently apropos. However, the focus of the book, on the journalism aspect of Gareth Jones is in my mind the least interesting aspect of his story. As Ray Gamache (professor of journalism) himself put it:
I feel that too much of the book is Gamache defending and explaining journalism (even frequently quoting modern journalistic ethics and modern journalistic thinkers) and not enough of Gareth Jones himself. I think Gamache, a professor of journalism, fails to understand the public's current opinion of journalists, which is largely negative. The story of Gareth Jones reinforces this view, that journalism is propaganda (in fancy dress), and the example of Gareth Jones is the exception, not the rule, while Walter Duranty is the rule and not the exception.
The story of Gareth Jones and the Holodomor is inherently historically interesting and currently apropos. However, the focus of the book, on the journalism aspect of Gareth Jones is in my mind the least interesting aspect of his story. As Ray Gamache (professor of journalism) himself put it:
This textual analysis of the newspaper articles, correspondence, and diaries of Gareth Jones reveals much about his development as a journalist...That scholars continue to label Jones as foreign affairs adviser rather than seein him as a journalist...(p.222)
I feel that too much of the book is Gamache defending and explaining journalism (even frequently quoting modern journalistic ethics and modern journalistic thinkers) and not enough of Gareth Jones himself. I think Gamache, a professor of journalism, fails to understand the public's current opinion of journalists, which is largely negative. The story of Gareth Jones reinforces this view, that journalism is propaganda (in fancy dress), and the example of Gareth Jones is the exception, not the rule, while Walter Duranty is the rule and not the exception.
February 10, 2018
Great resource and story
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews