Film Review: STALIN’S OMELETTE

  by Christopher Draper

POLISH DIRECTOR Agnieszka Holland’s important new film tells the story of Gareth Jones’ courageous reporting of Stalin’s murderous 1932-33 “Holomodor”.  This Soviet “holocaust” was alternately ignored and denied by the world’s press and remains so today.  Jones’ reports and reputation were traduced by his press colleagues, orchestrated by Walter Duranty, the celebrated, Pullitzer Prize-winning, resident Moscow correspondent of the New York Times who shockingly trivialised the deaths of four million Ukrainians with the observation, 'You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.'

Mr Jones goes Free-range

Whilst the salaried correspondents of the international press were content to remain in Moscow, wined, dined and accommodated in relative luxury as favoured mouthpieces of Soviet propaganda, Gareth Jones investigated independently as an irregular 'stringer'.  After interviewing, on his own initiative, numerous Russian representatives in Moscow, in March 1933 Jones obtained official permission to travel by rail to visit and report on a 'model' Soviet tractor factory in Kharkiv.  Gareth duly boarded the train in Moscow but got off well before reaching Kharkiv so that he could conduct his own 'unofficial' investigations into conditions on the ground in rural Ukraine.

Already aware of widespread rumours of Stalin’s ruthless treatment of rural Ukraine, Jones, a fluent Russian speaker, trudged forty miles on foot, passing through fourteen villages and everywhere encountering starving people.  Peasants expressed their fierce resentment against Bolshevik battalions corralling them into collectivized farms and then stealing away their pitiful produce with no regard for their former ways of farming, culture, co-operation and exchange.  Despite this mechanistic regimentation of rural labour resulting in a catastrophic diminution of production Stalin demanded and appropriated ever increasing amounts of grain, meat and vegetables.

Inconvenient Truths

Jones left Russia at the end of March and immediately filed newspaper reports and delivered public lectures on the starvation conditions he’d witnessed and just as promptly he came under attack from Stalin’s apologists, led by Walter Duranty.  The first of more than twenty of Jones’ published reports appeared in the Manchester Guardian on 30 March 1933 headlined 'FAMINE IN RUSSIA'.  The very next day the New York Times printed Duranty’s dismissive, 'RUSSIANS HUNGRY, BUT NOT STARVING'.  Referring to Jones by name, Duranty described Gareth’s account as 'a big scare story'.

Holland’s film does an excellent job of raising the profile of the myriad key issues around the Holodomor and its reporting.  The production values are high and visually the picture looks well alongside other 'art-house' productions but characterisation has been sacrificed to inaccurately accentuate a desired narrative.  Like the original reporting of the Holodomor, the film shows signs of clumsy political manipulation.  Absolute integrity and telling inconvenient truths were the essence of Gareth Jones’ reporting yet Agnieszka Holland has taken several absurd liberties with the truth to sex up her picture.  To be specific:

a) There is no evidence that Jones, inadvertently, or otherwise, indulged in or even witnessed any incidents of cannibalism in the Ukraine.

b) Jones explicitly states that he saw no dead bodies lying around unburied.

c) Whilst living in Paris it’s quite possible that Duranty previously indulged in the sort of sex parties depicted, there’s no evidence, and it’s most unlikely, that he did so in Moscow in the 1930’s and placing Jones at such an event is absurd.

d) Jones never met George Orwell, nor is there any evidence that his reporting inspired Animal Farm.

e) The key character 'Paul Klebb' who, in the film, posthumously inspires and informs Jones’ Ukraine journey never existed but was doubtless inserted as a spurious, politically motivated reference to a similarly named individual who was likely murdered on Putin’s orders.

Good Effort but no Cigar

Despite the film’s shortcomings it should be seen and reflected upon.  It’s not unvarnished truth, if that were ever possible, but it’s accessible, reasonably entertaining and essential viewing for anyone with a serious interest in history or politics though it’s far from the last word.

Many lies and inaccuracies about the Holomodor remain to be challenged and as this film exemplifies, new untruths are still being manufactured so in “HOLOMODOR - Part Two” (to be published shortly on this website) I’ll identify false claims made by (amongst others) authors, Anne Applebaum, Sally J Taylor, James William Cowl and the Communist Party of Great Britain and examine Stalin’s role in the 1935 murder of Gareth Jones.

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