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Step 8 of 16 · March 1933

Gareth Jones walks the villages

A Welsh journalist leaves the official route and walks through villages in the Kharkiv region. His report comes out in Berlin, and The New York Times' Moscow chief replies that people are hungry but not starving.

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  • Where the losses will fall
  • Cordon of 22 January 1933
  • Hiding or exposing the record

Circles show each 1932 oblast's total losses for 1932–34 (HURI); no month-by-month split per oblast is published. Borders and the cordon are approximate.

Claims

Hiding the famineHigh confidence
1) Time range
1933-03-10 … 1933-03-29
2) Human profile
Gareth Jones · Welsh freelance journalist, former foreign-affairs adviser to David Lloyd George
3) Decisions
  1. Left the official route and walked through villages of the Kharkiv region, keeping a diary
  2. Issued a press release in Berlin on 29 March, printed by the Manchester Guardian and the New York Evening Post
Affected
The first signed, named eyewitness account in the Western press
Gap
His follow-up is dated Financial News, 11 Apr (EN) or Financial Times, 13 Apr (RU).

EN Wikipedia · Gareth Jones

Hiding the famineHigh confidence
1) Time range
1933-03-31
2) Human profile
Walter Duranty · Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times, 1932 Pulitzer Prize
3) Decisions
  1. Called Jones's account a "big scare story" ("Russians Hungry, But Not Starving")
  2. Privately told the British embassy and Eugene Lyons that as many as 10 million might have died; the figure never appeared in his reporting
Affected
US elite opinion in the months before US recognition of the USSR (Nov 1933)
Gap
The EN Duranty article dates the embassy remark to 1934.

EN Wikipedia · Walter DurantyEN Wikipedia · Denial

Hiding the famineHigh confidence
1) Time range
1933-04
2) Human profile
Maxim Litvinov · People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR
3) Decisions
  1. Wrote to Lloyd George that Jones was banned from ever returning to the USSR
Affected
Gareth Jones; killed in Inner Mongolia in August 1935 (NKVD involvement suspected, not proven)

EN Wikipedia · Gareth Jones

Hiding the famineHigh confidence
1) Time range
1933-03-25 … 1933-03-28
2) Human profile
Malcolm Muggeridge · Stand-in Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian
3) Decisions
  1. Travelled to Ukraine and the North Caucasus without permission
  2. Sent his reports through the British diplomatic bag; published anonymously and partly cut
Affected
A second independent eyewitness record

EN Wikipedia · Malcolm Muggeridge

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