FOR THE RECORD Relatives of Gareth Jones write letter to Times publisher (11/09/03)

FOR THE RECORD

Relatives of Gareth Jones write letter to Times publisher

The following is a copy of the letter sent on October 24 to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The New York Times, by the niece of Gareth Jones, a correspondent who wrote truthfully about the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine.

It dispels the justification, cited by some, including the spokesperson for the Pulitzer Prize Board, for not revoking Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize, namely, that Duranty received his prize for correspondence in 1931, a year before the actual starvations. Jones, however, documents Stalin's ruthless plan as early as 1930.

Please note regarding the website cited below that, as was the convention 70 years ago, the entire Soviet Union was referred to as Russia. The afflicted areas about which Jones wrote actually consist of Ukraine and Ukrainian-populated areas of Soviet Russia; he writes below of an area that is actually in eastern Ukraine (Donetsk).

- Russ Chelak

Dear Mr. Sulzberger:

Re: "Times Should Lose Pulitzer From 30s, Consultant to Paper Says," October 23, 2003, The New York Times, by Jacques Steinberg.

May I add weight to Prof. Lubomyr Luciuk' s letter to you to gracefully return the "lost" Pulitzer Prize awarded to Walter Duranty in 1932. My uncle, Gareth Jones, was the "Mr. Jones" who was so vilified in the Duranty article published in your paper on March 31, 1933. In this article Duranty denied there was famine, stating that: "There is no actual starvation or death from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."

In my uncle's reply to your then editor, published on May 13th 1933, Gareth Jones considered Moscow journalists to be "master of euphemism and understatement." Gareth Jones could not have been any more forthright by signing off his letter: "May I in conclusion congratulate the Soviet Foreign Office on its skill in concealing the true situation in the USSR? Moscow is not Russia, and the sight of well-fed people there tends to hide the real Russia."

Gareth Jones, a first-class honors graduate of Russian and German from Cambridge University, later acted as a foreign affairs advisor to Lloyd George, visited the Soviet Union in 1930, 1931 and 1933, and was no stranger to the country. Indeed, unlike the reporting of Walter Duranty, whom Gareth met four times, he was well aware as early as August 1930 of the terrible plight of the Ukrainians, and he wrote from Berlin to his parents on August 26, 1930, the following letter (a scan of the original hand-written document may be viewed at: http://www.colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/gareth_1930.htm):

"Hurray! It is wonderful to be in Germany again, absolutely wonderful. Russia is in a very bad state; rotten, no food, only bread; oppression, injustice, misery among the workers and 90 percent discontented. I saw some very bad things, which made me mad to think that people like [Bernard Shaw] go there and come back, after having been led round by the nose and had enough to eat, and say that Russia is a paradise. In the South there is talk of a new revolution, but it will never come off, because the army and the OGPU (Soviet police) are too strong. The winter is going to be one of great suffering there and there is starvation. The government is the most brutal in the world. The peasants hate the Communists. This year thousands and thousands of the best men in Russia have been sent to Siberia and the prison island of Solovki. People are now speaking openly against the government. In the Donetz [Donets -ed.] Basin conditions are unbearable. One reason why I left Hughesovska [Yuzivka, today known as Donetsk] so quickly was that all I could get to eat was a roll of bread - and that is all I had up to 7 o'clock. Many Russians are too weak to work. I am terribly sorry for them. They cannot strike or they are shot or sent to Siberia. There are heaps of enemies of the Communists within the country.

"Nevertheless great strides have been made in many industries and there is a good chance that when the Five-Year Plan is over Russia may become prosperous. But before that there will be great suffering, many riots and many deaths."

In view of the fact that Walter Duranty must have known the true state of affairs in Ukraine in 1930 and by his denial of the famine as "Stalin's Apologist," then I totally support the campaign requesting you to return his Pulitzer in the name of my uncle, Gareth Jones, and all those who sadly perished in the Holodomor of 1932-1933.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Margaret Siriol Colley

P.S. There is an extensive website dedicated to Gareth Jones who was tragically murdered in 1935, by politically controlled bandits in Inner Mongolia whilst "In search of news" and you may be interested to discover further details of his truthful Soviet reporting at www.colley.co.uk/garethjones.

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