Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones (1905 – August 1935) was a Welsh journalist who first publicised the existence of the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 in the west. His mother had spent the period 1889-1892 as tutor to the children of Arthur Hughes, the son of Welsh steel industrialist John Hughes who had founded the town of Yuzovka, modern day Donetsk, in the Ukraine, and her stories inspired in Jones a desire to visit the Soviet Union, and particularly the Ukraine. 1905 (MCMV) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... For an explanation of often confusing terms such as Great Britain, Britain, United Kingdom, England and Wales and England, see British Isles (terminology). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Child victim of the Holodomor The Holodomor (Ukrainian: ) was a famine on the territory of Soviet Ukraine in the years 1932–1933. ... Motto: Oblast Donetsk Oblast Mayor Boris Kolesnikov Area 358 км² Population  - city  - density 1,131,700 2,838 /km² Founded 1869 Latitude Longitude 48°00′N 37°48′E Area code +380 62 Car plates  ?? sister cities Bochum, Charleroi, Pittsburgh, Sheffield, Taranto, Moscow, Vilnius Municipal Website Donetsk (Ukrainian: , Donetsk; Russian...

Gareth Jones had a brilliant academic career, graduating from Aberystwyth University in 1926 with a first class degree in French, and from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1929 with a first class honours degree in French, German, and Russian. [1] In January 1930 he began work as Foreign Affairs Advisor to former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and that summer made his first brief "pilgrimage" to Yuzovka (by then renamed Stalino). In 1931 he was offered employment in New York by Dr Ivy Lee, public relations advisor to organisations such as the Rockefeller Institute, the Chrysler Foundation, and Standard Oil, to research a book about the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1931 he toured the Soviet Union with Jack Heinz II of the food company dynasty, producing a diary published by Heinz as Experiences in Russia 1931. A Diary. which probably contains the first usage of the word "starve" in relation to the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture. In 1932 Jones returned to work for Lloyd George and helped the wartime Prime Minister write his War Memoirs. The University of Wales, Aberystwyth, a Member Institution of the federal University of Wales, was the first university institution to be established in Wales. ... Full name The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity Motto Virtus vera nobilitas Virtue is true Nobility Named after The Holy Trinity Previous names Kings Hall and Michaelhouse (until merged in 1546) Established 1546 Sister College(s) Christ Church Master The Lord Rees of Ludlow Location Trinity Street... David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, OM, PC (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was a British statesman and the last member of the Liberal Party to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the state of New York and the entire United States. ...

In late January and early February 1933 Jones was in Germany covering the accession to power of the Nazi Party, and was in Leipzig on the day Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. A few days later he flew with Hitler to Frankfurt and reported on the new Chancellors' tumuluous acclamation in that city. The next month he travelled to Russia and the Ukraine, and on his return to Berlin on 29 March 1933 he issued his famous press release which was published by many newspapers including the Manchester Guardian and the New York Evening Post: The Nazi swastika symbol The National Socialist German Workers Party ( German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), better known as the NSDAP or the Nazi Party was a political party that was led to power in Germany by Adolf Hitler in 1933. ... (help· info) [] (Sorbian/Lusatian: Lipsk) is the largest city in the Federal State (Bundesland) of Saxony in Germany. ... (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 and Führer (Leader) of Germany from 1934 until his death. ... March 29 is the 88th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (89th in Leap years). ... 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Guardian was also the name of a U.S. television series. ... The first edition of The New York Post of July 6, 2004 incorrectly declared that U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry would choose U.S. Representative Dick Gephardt to be his vice-presidential running mate that day (in reality, Kerry chose John Edwards). ...

"I walked along through villages and twelve collective farms. Everywhere was the cry, 'There is no bread. We are dying. This cry came from every part of Russia, from the Volga, Siberia, White Russia, the North Caucasus, and Central Asia. I tramped through the black earth region because that was once the richest farmland in Russia and because the correspondents have been forbidden to go there to see for themselves what is happening.

In the train a Communist denied to me that there was a famine. I flung a crust of bread which I had been eating from my own supply into a spittoon. A peasant fellow-passenger fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw an orange peel into the spittoon and the peasant again grabbed it and devoured it. The Communist subsided. I stayed overnight in a village where there used to be 200 oxen and where there now are six. The peasants were eating the cattle fodder and had only a month's supply left. They told me that many had already died of hunger. Two soldiers came to arrest a thief. They warned me against travel by night, as there were too many 'starving' desperate men.

'We are waiting for death' was my welcome, but see, we still, have our cattle fodder. Go farther south. There they have nothing. Many houses are empty of people already dead,' they cried."

This report was unwelcome in a great many of the media, as the intelligentsia of the time was still in sympathy with the Soviet regime. On 31 March the New York Times published a denial of Jones' statement by Walter Duranty under the headline "RUSSIANS HUNGRY, BUT NOT STARVING" which said the Kremlin denied the doom and that: 'Russian and foreign observers in country could see no grounds for predications of disaster'. On 13 May Jones published a strong rebuttal to Duranty in the New York Times, standing by his report: March 31 is the 90th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years), with 275 days remaining. ... The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ... Walter Duranty Walter Duranty (1884–1957), born in Liverpool, England, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a set of stories he wrote in 1931 as The New York Times’ Moscow correspondent, covering Joseph Stalins Five-Year Plan to industrialize the Soviet Union. ... May 13 is the 133rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (134th in leap years). ...

My first evidence was gathered from foreign observers. Since Mr. Duranty introduces consuls into the discussion, a thing I am loath to do, for they are official representatives of their countries and should not be quoted, may I say that I discussed the Russian situation with between twenty and thirty consuls and diplomatic representatives of various nations and that their evidence supported my point of view. But they are not allowed to express their views in the press, and therefore remain silent.

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." Consuls are not so reticent in private conversation.

In a personal letter from Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov (whom Jones had interviewed while in Moscow) to Lloyd George, Jones was informed that he was banned from ever visiting the Soviet Union again. Maxim Litvinov Maxim Maksimovich Litvinov (ru: Макси́м Макси́мович Литви́нов) (July 17, 1876–December 31, 1951) was a Russian revolutionary and prominent Soviet diplomat. ...

Banned from Russia, Jones turned his attention to the Far East and in late 1934 he left Britain on "Round-the-World Fact-Finding Tour". He spent about six weeks in Japan, interviewing important Generals and politicians, and he eventually reached Beijing. From here he travelled to Inner Mongolia in newly Japanese-occupied Manchukuo in the company of a German journalist. Detained by Japanese forces, the pair were told that there were three routes back to the Chinese town of Kalgan, only one of which was safe; they took this route but were captured by bandits who demanded a ransom of 100,000 Mexican silver pesos. The German journalist was released after two days, but sixteen days later the bandits shot Jones under mysterious circumstances, shortly before his thirtieth birthday. There were strong suspicions that Jones' murder was engineered by the Soviet NKVD in revenge for the embarrassment he had previously caused the Soviet regime. Beijing (Chinese: 北京; ; IPA: ), a city in northern China (formerly spelled in English as Peking or Peiking), is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). ... Inner Mongolia (Mongolian: ᠥᠪᠦᠷ ᠮᠣᠨᠺᠤᠯᠤᠨ ᠥᠪᠡᠷᠲᠡᠺᠡᠨ ᠵᠠᠰᠠᠬᠤ ᠣᠷᠤᠨ r Mongghul-un bertegen Jasaqu Orun; Chinese: 内蒙古自治区; Hanyu Pinyin: N i Měnggǔ Z qū) is an Autonomous Region of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Manchukuo (1932 to 1945) (Simplified Chinese: 满洲国; Traditional Chinese: 滿洲國; Pinyin: Kanji: 満州国) was a former country in Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia under the leadership of the Emperor Puyi, the last emperor of Qing Dynasty. ... Kalgan can refer to: A city in China, Zhangjiakou A planet in Isaac Asimovs Foundation series, Kalgan (Foundation universe) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The NKVD (Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (help· info))(Russian: НКВД, Народный комиссариат внутренних дел) or Peoples Commisariat for Internal Affairs was a government department which handled a number of the Soviet Unions affairs of state. ...

On 26 August 1935 the London Evening Standard quoted Lloyd George paying tribute to Jones: August 26 is the 238th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (239th in leap years). ... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Headlines of the Evening Standard on the day of London bombing on July 7, 2005, in Waterloo Station The Evening Standard is an English tabloid newspaper published and sold in London and surrounding areas. ...

"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."

Memorial

On 2 May 2006 a trilingual (Welsh/English/Ukrainian) plaque was unveiled in Gareth Jones' memory in the Old College at Aberystwyth University, in the presence of his niece Margaret Siriol Colley, and the Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK, Ihor Kharchanko, who described him as an "unsung hero of Ukraine". May 2 is the 122nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (123rd in leap years). ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Welsh redirects here, and this article describes the Welsh language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

References

• Short biography of Gareth Jones by his niece, Margaret Siriol Colley. Includes links to newspaper articles written by Jones from around the world.
• BBC report on the plaque unveiling