If you can get BBC4 try to watch this documentary on Thursday evening about the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, who was one of the very few Western journalists to write the truth about Stalin's collectivization and the deliberately engineered famine that accompanied it. For that, he was vilified by Walter Duranty, had his reputation destroyed and was banned from the Soviet Union. He went to the Far East and was murdered by bandits in Mongolia under very odd circumstances.
I am a little puzzled by the implication in the blurb that he may have been a spy (whose, exactly) and would like to find out what the BBC says about him though I cannot watch it myself (not having a TV set).
As a matter of fact, there has been a "rehabilitation" of Gareth Jones going on for some time. There is a site that is devoted to his life and work, which discusses the strange death of the genuine investigative journalist and quotes the stories he sent back from Ukraine. Even Wikipedia gives a reasonable account of his life. However, all contribution to the telling of truth is welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment