But they are only Russians....
John Sweeney visited Ukraine, where memories linger still of Stalin’s great famine of the 1930s which killed up to 10 million people, to tell the riveting story of how two journalists covered the story: Walter Duranty, who hid the facts and won the Pulitzer; and Gareth Jones, who told the truth and died in mysterious circumstances. Duranty later owned up, adding: ‘But they are only Russians....’
Transmission Date – FRIDAY 13 JANUARY AT 11 am on Radio 4
Reporter: John Sweeney Producer: David Coomes Production Company: CTVC Ltd
Press Contact for CTVC:
Clare Hocter – clare.hocter@ctvc.co.uk, tel 020 7940 8486, 07801 217071
This is John Sweeney’s story of two journalists – Walter Duranty, Stalin’s apologist, and Gareth Jones, Stalin’s opponent – whose acrimonious relationship in the 1930s was forged during Stalin’s great famine in Northern Russia and the Ukraine.
Forged, too, in their very different philosophies of journalism.
An intriguing story in itself, it also spills over into 21st century Russia, where Vladimir Putin’s promotion of ‘positive history’ includes school history books with 80 pages on Stalin’s industrialisation policies and a paragraph on the famine which killed up to 10 million people.
Gareth Jones, a fearless investigative reporter and brilliant linguist, never in his short life swallowed an official line, preferring to find out for himself. So it was in Russia. Defying a ban on journalists visiting famine-hit areas, he travelled into the forbidden zone and reported back the terrible facts which were at dramatic odds with government propaganda. He did so only after meeting thousands of people near death who pleaded with him for bread. Later, Jones was shot dead while on a visit to China. His tour guide – it later emerged – was an agent for Stalin’s secret police. Former Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, for whom Jones had once been personal secretary, said that he was ‘a man who had known too much of what was really going on and dared to report it’.
Walter Duranty, originally from Liverpool, belonged to the school of Journalism which promoted the official line for the sake of reputation, advancement, and riches – and sought always to make the facts fit the fiction. Heading the Moscow press pack from a bar stool in the Metropole Hotel, he rubbished Jones in his newspaper, the New York Times, calling him ‘a liar who excels in scare stories’. He wrote: ‘There is no starvation, let alone deaths from starvation.’ Yet privately, he told colleagues that perhaps millions had perished, ‘but they are only Russians’. There is some evidence that Duranty, a sophisticated charmer, always surrounded by beautiful women, may have been the victim of sexual blackmail. Whatever the truth of that, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for an interview with Stalin himself.
