I feel very privileged to have had James Mace's constructive ear and continued support during my on-going research, and before his premature death last year, into my great uncle Gareth Jones' murder being possibly related to his exposure of the Holodomor.

In August 1935, just eight months after repeating his famine claims in Randolph Hearst's stable of American newspapers, Gareth was kidnapped by bandits, whilst investigating Japanese territorial expansionism in Inner Mongolia. Despite making world-wide news at the time, and with a hefty ransom ready to be paid, on the eve of his 30th Birthday, after two weeks in captivity, he was eventually shot with two bullets in his back and one apparently later on, in the back of his head.

Blame at the time was pointed mainly at Japanese or alternatively towards the Nazis by inference of a secret pact between the two nations by one Claud Cockburn, an influential Marxist journalist in London, who later coined the phrase 'the Clivedon Set' to describe the pre-war appeasement policy by the British Government of non-aggression towards Hitler.

Because of these specific allegations, the British Foreign Office compiled a 500-page dossier, primarily investigating Cockburn's claims, so as to prevent Gareth's former & concerned employer Lloyd George from asking any embarrassing questions about Japanese or Nazi involvement in Parliament. Nevertheless, it was still a little surprising that in the whole dossier, there was not one single reference made to any conceivable link between his murder and his 1933 embarrassing exposure of a Soviet Ukrainian famine. So if Cockburn's intention was to deflect any blame away from the Bolsheviks, then he duly succeeded.

However, over seventy years on, and after a chance reference by Andrew Stuttaford on The National Review website, I followed up a possible lead about the German firm Wostwag, which courteously gave Gareth his last transport before he was kidnapped. From recently released secret records in the British Public Records Office at Kew Gardens, London, it is now evident that Wostwag were an NKVD trading front.

So one has to wonder, whether the ultimate decision for his murder didn't actually emanate from Moscow, and due in retribution for his international exposure of the Holodomor?

I would like to discuss today three topics related to the western reporting of the famine at the time, which I believe will bring some further insights into the subject, and each of which has a bearing on Gareth's own reporting, namely:

1. Eugene Lyons' firsthand account of the conspiracy behind Moscow-based journalists colluding to denigrate Gareth in their cover-up the famine in 1933.
2. George Orwell and his accurate interpretation in Animal Farm of the press cover up of the famine.
3. And finally an observation of Malcolm Muggeridge's first-hand reporting of the famine in 1933, which may have eventually resulted in his later airbrushing of Gareth's role in exposing the famine.

Whenever the subject of the concealment of the famine by the western press is discussed or even first discovered like myself, then Walter Duranty's infamous phrase in the New York Times of the 31 March 1933 is never far away:

"THERE is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."

Duranty's article is considered a classic for its sophistry and was written specifically to counter the famine claims of Gareth Jones.

However it is probably because of a single chapter in Eugene Lyons' 1937 book, Assignment in Utopia entitled "The Press Corps Conceals a Famine" that this New York Times article and the strange story behind its writing has never been forgotten in the West.

It is perhaps worth pr�cising its contents before then discussing their authenticity�

The first reliable report of the Russian famine was given to the world by an English journalist, a certain Gareth Jones, a one time secretary to Lloyd George. Jones had a conscientious streak in his make-up which took him on a secret journey into the Ukraine and a brief walking tour through its countryside. That same streak was to take him a few years later into the interior of China during political disturbances, and was to cost him his life at the hands of Chinese military bandits. An earnest and meticulous little man, Gareth Jones was the sort who carries a note-book and unashamedly records your words as you talk. Patiently he went from one correspondent to the next, asking questions and writing down the answers.

Lyons certainly summed up Gareth's character, conscience and itinerary very accurately -- which we can confirm by the copious numbers of diaries which still remain, from all of his travels. Indeed, it was only a brief walking tour within Ukraine, before being picked up by the Secret Police and taken to the German Consul in Kharkov. His diaries note how he crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border on foot, no doubt to avoid detection and then followed the main Moscow-Sebastopol railway line on foot, stopping off in villages along the way and staying overnight in peasant cottages.

Lyons continues:

On emerging from Russia, Jones made a statement which, startling though it sounded, was little more than a summary of what the correspondents and foreign diplomats had told him. To protect us, and perhaps with some idea of heightening the authenticity of his reports, he emphasized his Ukrainian foray rather than our conversation as the chief source of his information.

In any case, we all received urgent queries from our home offices on the subject. But the inquiries coincided with preparations under way for the trial of the British engineers. The need to remain on friendly terms with the censors at least for the duration of the trial was for all of us a compelling professional necessity.

Throwing down Jones was as unpleasant a chore as fell to any of us in years of juggling facts to please dictatorial regimes -- but throw him down we did, unanimously and in almost identical formulas of equivocation. Poor Gareth Jones must have been the most surprised human being alive when the facts he so painstakingly garnered from our mouths were snowed under by our denials.

The scene in which the American press corps combined to repudiate Jones is fresh in my mind. It was in the evening and Comrade Umansky [the chief press censor], the soul of graciousness, consented to meet us in the hotel room of a correspondent. He knew that he had a strategic advantage over us because of the Metro-Vickers story. He could afford to be gracious. Forced by competitive journalism to jockey for the inside track with officials, it would have been professional suicide to make an issue of the famine at this particular time. There was much bargaining in a spirit of gentlemanly give-and-take, under the effulgence of Umansky's gilded smile, before a formula of denial was worked out.

We admitted enough to soothe our consciences, but in roundabout phrases that damned Jones as a liar. The filthy business having been disposed of, someone ordered vodka and zakuski, Umansky joined the celebration, and the party did not break up until the early morning hours. The head censor was in a mellower mood than I had ever seen him before or since. He had done a big bit for Bolshevik firmness that night.

It is certainly a strange story and whether it is entirely true or not, Duranty certainly did write an article which damned Jones as a liar.

Last November [2004] I took the opportunity whilst in New York to delve through Columbia University Newspapers archives.

There I found a copy of Hubert Knickerbocker's front page 'exclusive' in Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Post dated 29th March 1933, ["Famine grips Russia, millions dying, idle on rise says Briton"] quoting extensively from Gareth's Berlin press conference. So historically, Knickerbocker's article along with one on the same day by the German correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, Edgar Ansel Mowrer ["Russian famine now as great as starvation of 1921 says secretary to Lloyd George"] were the first journalists to break the famine story in the United States.

[As background, Knickerbocker was also a good friend of Duranty -- even co-writing novels together. He also won the Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence in 1931 (the year before Duranty) for his Soviet reporting, but by 1933 was a Berlin Correspondent for Hearst. FYI - Mowrer also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for his reporting of the rise to power of Hitler.]

In any event the famine story was so urgent to Gareth that it couldn't wait to be broken at a pre-arranged prestigious talk at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which Gareth was giving on the next evening in London.

Nevertheless, in response to Knickerbocker's article Duranty's very quickly followed, but from reading it is clear that Duranty had not had sight of Knickerbocker's story detailing Gareth's claims, as he never specifically countered any of Gareth's allegations and relied heavily on private conversation he may have had with Gareth in Moscow's Hotel Metropole, where Duranty frequently held court.

The only quote from his article, which Duranty specifically referred to of Gareth's existed in neither Knickerbocker's nor Mowrer's article, where he wrote:

"there appears from a British source a big scare story in the American press about famine in the Soviet Union, with [quote] "thousands already dead and millions menaced by death and starvation." [unquote]

Because Duranty's article is dated Moscow 30th March, one has to wonder if a Soviet-sympathetic journalist in attendance at Gareth's Berlin Press Conference had alerted the Soviet authorities in Moscow, possibly by telegram though furnished them with little more�

So when exactly did this supposed Vodka and Zakuski party take place? From considering international time zone differences between New York and Moscow, if Knickerbocker's article came out mid-afternoon in New York on the 29th [March, 1933], it would already be about midnight in Moscow, and this would have been before anyone in New York had chance to read it and then immediately disseminate its contents back to Moscow.

However it is conceivable that the Moscow party occurred on the evening of the 30th and then filed immediately by cable to the offices of the New York Times, and it would still have had time to make the presses for publication on the 31st, which is when it did indeed appear. Though if this scenario did occur then surely, Duranty would have been furnished with a complete copy of Knickerbocker's offending article, so as to counter Gareth's specific allegations. [It is also noted too that from Duranty's 1934 book "Russia Reported" he is also known to have filed another story from Berlin on the 31st March, so it is then more likely that he would have travelled there by train on the 30th.]

Therefore, I believe that news of an impending famine news story came directly from Berlin to Moscow and not via New York.

When I was at Columbia Library, I was curious to investigate Lyons' claim that "when the facts he [Gareth] so painstakingly garnered from our mouths were snowed under by our denials."

Well, I may be mistaken, but after several hours of trawling through American newspapers of the time with a colleague, we were unable to find any other story apart from Duranty's in American Press refuting Gareth's claims of a famine -- They were all too preoccupied filling column inches with the forthcoming trial of the Metrovick engineers. The only other article of which I am aware of is a quotation by the known Soviet-sympathetic Louis Fischer within the Denver Post, whilst he was on a countrywide lecture tour, but that was presumably in response to Knickerbocker's article and published on the 1st April [1933] -- and after Duranty's article. So where was Duranty's "big scare story" and where were Lyons' U.S. correspondents' "denials"?

At this point I considered that Lyon's account may not have been entirely accurate, if indeed at all. James Crowl in his book on the subject, Angels in Paradise, also questioned Lyons in 1977 about this occasion and even though it was over 40 years later, he remembered little:

� about the meeting with Oumansky than the description of it in Assignment in Utopia. It was not a "general session" of the foreign correspondents, he recalls, nor did Oumansky have to do more than "hint" as to what should be done. Lyons cannot remember who attended or even more specifically where the meeting was held. He adds however, that "presumably" Duranty was there.

This obduracy on Lyons' part could at first sight be put down to the passing of time or even the onset of old age, but when I reread Lyons' account of the party, noting the careful usage of the words, "we," "us" and "our," then perhaps it becomes quite plausible that Duranty's article might well have been composed by a "committee" of American journalists, before their drunken party began.

Therefore the stated phrases of a "formula of denial" and "throw him down we did, unanimously" would now refer to the American press corps "collectively" agreeing to allow Duranty's respected column in the New York Times to be the messenger to espouse Gareth's public humiliation.

Furthermore, the Lyons famine chapter, although its opening words quoted Duranty's article, "There is no actual starvation, etc.�" it did not attribute the quote as Duranty's, but merely cited the New York Times as the source:

This amazing sophistry, culled from a New York Times Moscow dispatch on March 30, 1933, has become among foreign reporters the classic example of journalistic understatement. It characterizes sufficiently the whole shabby episode of our failure to report honestly the gruesome Russian famine of 1932-33.

We know that Lyons' information on Gareth was fundamentally correct, so I have no reason to doubt his version of events -- However if the rest of his story is completely false, then it is almost bizarre�. Certainly, no researcher has found another story "damning Jones." So one can probably presume there were none. And, why did none of the American press corps deny that the party had ever existed after the publication of Lyon's book in 1937?

If collusion did occur, then it is quite understandable why Lyons might have appeared later in life to have had selective amnesia on the subject of the Moscow party, so as to avoid admitting to his own culpability in the whole sorry saga and thereby leaving the then late Duranty to shoulder the blame single-handedly from the grave. This does not mean that Duranty was any less guilty for allowing his Pulitzer reputation to be used to attack Gareth's reputation, but quite probably he was not alone �

In August 1945 George Orwell's Animal Farm was eventually published, having previously been turned down by about 14 London publishers who were wary of upsetting 'Uncle Joe' Stalin who was then a wartime ally of the British.

In an essay he wrote in 1945 entitled, "The Prevention of Literature" Orwell is fully conversant with the Moscow Foreign Press concealing the famine:

"The fog of lies and misinformation that surrounds such subjects as the Ukraine famine, the Spanish civil war, Russian policy in Poland, and so forth, is not due entirely to conscious dishonesty, but any writer or journalist who is fully sympathetic for the U.S.S.R. -- sympathetic, that is, in the way the Russians themselves would want him to be -- does have to acquiesce in deliberate falsification on important issues."

In his proposed preface to Animal Farm Orwell wrote of the difficulty of getting his book published citing the concealment of the Holodomor:

The English intelligentsia, or a great part of it, had developed a nationalistic loyalty towards the USSR, and in their hearts they felt that to cast any doubt on the wisdom of Stalin was a kind of blasphemy. Events in Russia and events elsewhere were to be judged by different standards. The endless executions in the purges of 1936-8 were applauded by life-long opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicise famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine.

The question arises how did Orwell get to discover in such great detail about the concealment of the famine and Duranty's role in particular? The answer lays in the fact that about the time he came up with the concept of his fairy tale, he reviewed Eugene Lyon's Assignment in Utopia in June 1938 for the New English Weekly and would no doubt have come across both Gareth's and Duranty's names in the chapter entitled "The Press Corps Conceals a famine".

Indeed Lyons' book must have a made a lasting impression on Orwell. Lyons writes about a soviet slogan "2+2=5" used to describe that the 5-year plan could be achieved in four years. Orwell was to take this equation and incorporate it into his later novel 1984, where the main Character Winston Smith uses it to consider the possibility that the State might declare "two plus two makes five" as a fact; Winston ponders that if everybody believes in it, does that make it true?

Accepting that Orwell was therefore aware of Lyons' book then it becomes much clearer when he references it in Animal Farm�

Chapter VII opens with a clear parallel to the Holodomor and includes a caricature of Walter Duranty as the character Mr Whymper, Napoleon as Stalin and the Windmill here represents the aims of the 5 year plan:

In January food fell short� For days at a time the animals had nothing to eat but chaff and mangels. Starvation seemed to stare them in the face. It was vitally necessary to conceal this fact from the outside world. Emboldened by the collapse of the windmill, the human beings were inventing fresh lies about Animal Farm. Once again it was being put about that all the animals were dying of famine and disease, and that they were continually fighting among themselves and had resorted to cannibalism and infanticide. Napoleon was well aware of the bad results that might follow if the real facts of the food situation were known, and he decided to make use of Mr Whymper to spread a contrary impression.

Here Orwell's reference to 'human beings [who] were inventing fresh lies about Animal Farm', probably relates to specifically Gareth's famine exposure especially as in the next sentence Orwell wrote "all the animals were dying of famine and disease" which in my mind quite oviously refers to Duranty's March 31 1933 New York Times article where he wrote "THERE is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition." Then the end of this Orwell paragraph he concludes with Napoleon deciding to use "Mr Whymper to spread a contrary impression."

Orwell then continues his references to the concealment of the famine (and for the most part it alludes to Duranty, but admittedly also could be making reference to George Bernard Shaw's visit to a model collective farm in Moscow in 1931.

Orwell continued:

Napoleon ordered the almost empty bins in the store-shed to be filled nearly to the brim with sand, which was then covered up with what remained of the grain and meal. On some suitable pretext Whymper was led through the store-shed and allowed to catch a glimpse of the bins. He was deceived, and continued to report to the outside world that there was no food shortage on Animal Farm.

There are many other more in-depth references I could make regarding Orwell's interpretation of the Holodomor and to Duranty as well, but as time does not permit, then they are available on our Gareth Jones Website.

As an aside, before James Mace died I received a delightful email after he had read my appraisal of Animal Farm and the Holodomor where he wrote:

Dear Nigel,

I just got around to reading your excellent reading of Animal Farm. On the whole, I think it is an excellent piece of detective work that not only does your uncle's memory credit but also helps those who study Orwell.
Best Wishes. Jim

This was also in part due to a related page on our memorial website where I have argued the possibility that the symbolism of Orwell's Mr Jones the Farmer, even though he clearly alludes to Tsar Nicholas is possibly named after Gareth Jones. Though Jones is a common Welsh name, on a typically English farm, where Animal Farm is set, then Farmer Smith would have been more appropriate. Furthermore, all of Orwell symbolisms in the names he chose for the characters in the book, have specific relevance, such as "Squealer" being seen as the Soviet Newspapers, Izvestia or Pravda. It is therefore curious as to why he didn't use a name for his farmer relating to the Romanovs?

Finally in this section, eminent Orwellian scholars with whom the matter has been discussed such as 2003 biographer D. J Taylor believe it to be a plausible notion, but unfortunately there is not one reference in Orwell's archives to either Gareth Jones or to the precise name of this character, so I am afraid it will probably forever remain a mystery�

Muggeridge in line with other most Moscow based correspondents, said in 1972 of his own reporting:

Being a newspaper correspondent in Moscow, I found, was, in itself, easy enough. The Soviet press was the only source of news; nothing happened or was said until it was reported in the newspapers. So, all I had to do was to go through the papers, pick out any item that might be interesting to readers of the Guardian, dish it up in a suitable form, get it passed by the censor at the Press Department, and hand it in at the telegraph office for dispatch. One might, if in a conscientious mood, embellish the item a little with back references or some extra statistics, easily procured from the Commercial Attach� at the British Embassy, where also the Press was meticulously gone through and analysed � The original item itself was almost certainly untrue or grotesquely distorted. One's own deviations, therefore, seemed to matter little; only amounting to further falsifying what was already false.

Muggeridge probably utilising his own stated technique of reporting was able to cover a story on 13th January 1933 in the Manchester Guardian, "Russia's 'Plan' Virtual Breakdown of Agriculture Officials Shot," where he appears to have quoted directly from the pages of a Rostov newspaper named 'Molot' [established in 1917 and which translates into English as 'Hammer']. Muggeridge himself claimed to have received his newspaper reports from an anonymous North Caucasian who turned up on his Moscow doorstep. Though it is not inconceivable that they weren't the same rogue Kuban newspapers also discovered by Lyons' secretary [about military terror and exiled villages], which he then passed on to other reporters. In early February, this tip-off led American correspondents William Stoneman of the Chicago Daily News and Ralph Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune, to make their own independent investigative trip to Rostov, but after a few days they were picked up by the secret police and returned to Moscow. Regardless of the Kuban story's source, in explaining how Muggeridge's damning January article got passed by the censors, then as Lyons explained in Assignment in Utopia: "Anything published in the Soviet press was by that fact alone, exempt from censorship,"

On the 25th, 27th and 28th of March [1933], Muggeridge wrote his three unsigned but now famous articles reporting his own personal observations of a full-blown famine, with whole villages having been exiled and a state of military occupation in and around Kuban.

From researching all of Muggeridge's later writings, interviews and also communication with his family, though everything which Muggeridge reported was undoubtedly true in subject matter, it now seems that Muggeridge may not have actually made a detour to Kiev on his trip to Kuban in early February as claimed in his series of three articles.

It is my belief that he embellished the truth at the time over his exact whereabouts and in later life he was unable to change his story, maybe fearful of falling foul of the 1970's famine deniers?

And then, when it came to his exposure of the famine in his auotbiography he creatively forgot about Gareth Jones' role entirely (though his official biographer Richard Ingrams commendably did not). Muggeridge wrote:

"As it happened, no other foreign journalist had been into the famine areas in the USSR except under official auspices and supervision, so my account was by way of being exclusive. This brought me no kudos, and many accusations of being a liar, in The Guardian correspondence columns and elsewhere. I had to wait for Khruschev -- who surely knew the truth if anyone did, having been himself one of the chief terrorists in the Ukraine -- for official confirmation."

Unfortunately his 1962 published diaries of his time in the USSR, Like it Was, have his last entry dated in Moscow on the 29th January [1933], the week before his trip into the Soviet countryside.

On the 14th January 1933, Muggeridge wrote to his editor Crozier:

"It is becoming increasingly obvious to me that the only way to write properly about the existing situation in Russia is to visit the provinces - especially North Caucasus, Kuban and if possible, West Siberia."

One should note that there is no mention of any intention to visit Kiev or Ukraine in advance of his trip.

Then after his return on the 26th February, he wrote again to Crozier:

"Actually, I didn't get as far as I had hoped because it's difficult in Russia in the winter, especially now when there's no food at all outside the towns. Also, I haven't been very fit lately. But I think, in fact I know, I saw and heard enough to grasp the general situation."

When Stoneman and Barnes made their trip to Kuban in early 1933, they took an interpreter, whereas Muggeridge who spoke virtually no Russian went alone, but still managed to have an in-depth conversation about percentage taxes-in-kind per hectare by comparison to the previous years' district crop quotas, with a poor peasant farm worker -- and this occurred in a village 25 kilometres outside Kiev, which would have likely to have been a very difficult place to get to at the best of times and especially when he admits to not being 'very fit'.

In a 1983 conversation with Marco Carynnyk, entitled '"Deliberate," "diabolical" Starvation', Muggeridge stated: "Without making any kind of plans or asking for permission I just went and got a ticket for Kiev and then went on to Rostov." This route was the total opposite of his recorded itinerary in both his Manchester Guardian famine articles, as well as his account in his Chronicles autobiography.

However, from a purely geographical point of view, Kuban and Rostov are directly South of Moscow and for Muggeridge to have visited Kiev (travelling by train via Dniepropetrovsk) would have meant about a 600-mile detour on his return to Moscow, though in his 1972 autobiography he wrote that he: "procured the requisite return ticket to Rostov, with the possibility of getting off the train anywhere along the way." His train would certainly have travelled through Ukraine in transit, which would have allowed him to make this claim to the British Embassy afterwards. William Strang of the Embassy wrote to the British Foreign Office in a telegram on the 13th March 1933:

"Mr Muggeridge of the Manchester Guardian, the correspondent referred to in my telegram of the 5th March as having recently returned from a trip in the Ukraine and the Kuban, tells me that the conditions, especially in the Kuban, would be incredible to him if he had not seen them with his own eyes."

In his fictional account of the time, Winter in Moscow, Muggeridge portrays himself as the character Wraithby who only visited Ukraine in 1932 for the opening of Dneprostroy dam. In 1933, Wraithby only visited Rostov and a German Agricultural Concession near Kuban -- though he was advised by one character, Bulgakov, to visit Ukraine, but there is no subsequent mention of this happening afterwards.

The only character in Winter in Moscow who did visit the villages in Ukraine was Wilfred Pye, who is an obvious caricature of Gareth Jones.

Another anomaly over Muggeridge's exact 1933 whereabouts occurs in his Winter in Moscow 'Wraithby' chapter (with the same incident being reported in his second 1933 Manchester Guardian article), in which: "He [Wraithby] walked through the streets of Rostov with an elderly Intourist guide� He left her and turned into a church." [Pages 245 & 246 WiM]. By the time of Muggeridge's 1972 autobiography, it appears that this same church had been relocated: "In Kiev, where I found myself on a Sunday morning, on an impulse I turned into a church" [Page 287 Chronicles].

Though it is conceivable that Muggeridge visited two separate churches, despite the oppressive restrictions imposed by an Atheist Communist society, these were still the days before his celebrated conversion to 'St. Mugg', so perhaps his participation in two 'memorable' congregations within one short trip, might be more than could reasonably be expected ?

Regardless of whether Muggeridge went to Kiev or not, there is an interesting passage in the Wraithby chapter in Winter in Moscow, which shows that Muggeridge was probably aware in advance that Gareth Jones intended to visit the USSR with the sole purpose of exposing the famine, and for which he managed to scoop Gareth Jones's account chronologically.

Muggeridge described a conversation which he, Wraithby had in Rostov, where Jones transforms into a secondary persona of 'Lloyd George' and who duly arrives a month later -- Wraithby mentions a 'secret' which perhaps alludes to the purpose of Jones' trip:

"And why doesn't Lloyd George come to Russia?" He wanted to leave them [the people he was speaking to in Rostov] happy. They'd been very friendly and sociable; and he wanted to part from them in a cheerful happy atmosphere. "I'll tell you a secret" he said. "He is coming. And soon. In a month or so."

Their faces were radiant. "Lloyd George coming? Really coming?"

He assured them again and again that he was really coming. Sir Webb and then Lloyd George! It seemed too good to be true."

In private correspondence in 2004 with Muggeridge's family they too "have a great sense of unease over what happened [with Malcolm's reporting] in Russia and afterwards. Things do not add up in our view."

This is a most commendable stance by Muggeridge's family as "it is not the role of the [Muggeridge] society to present Malcolm other than he was". And from Gareth Jones' relatives' point of view, they equally don't want to take-away from the fact that Muggeridge's articles did indeed scoop Gareth Jones in exposing the famine in the west.

In conclusion, it is possible that Muggeridge may have continued to utilise his stated technique of writing Soviet articles to add to his own personal observations of his Kuban trip, adding Kiev to his itinerary merely to fill his articles knowing, like everybody else that conditions were worse than those he had personally witnessed.

I do accept that this is all circumstantial evidence, but if true, it may help explain his later amnesia over Gareth Jones, whom he knew to have visited Ukraine during the height of the famine in March 1933, but whose memory was conveniently, all but forgotten for almost 70 years, and who may well have paid the ultimate price with his life. He was murdered by Chinese bandits in 1935 on the Siberian border, though evidence is coming to light that the Soviet Secret Police had more than a helping hand in his early demise -- perhaps making Gareth Jones one of the last victims of the Holodomor; the courage of his truthful reporting being his only crime.

Finally, may I thank Russ and Karen Chelak of New Jersey for sponsoring my trip here to Ukraine, and to you my audience for listening to me. Thank You.

Content revised - April 2006 � 2006. Nigel Linsan Colley. All Rights Reserved