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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Sauce For The Goose?

by Les May

TRACY Ann Oberman, the actress, has written to the BBC to complain about the appearance of Ash Sarkar, an editor of Novara Media, in the documentary ‘Rise of the Nazis’. The reason Sarkar is included is to illuminate the context and perspective of Ernst Thälmann who led the German Communist party from 1925 to 1933, and died in a concentration camp in 1944. Oberman’s objection was that Sarkar had defended two people who had sprayed ‘Free Gaza and Palestine’ on one of the remaining walls of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Once again we have a complaint about what someone has said, in this case about a third party’s actions; in other words guilt by association.

Would it be legitimate to claim that by objecting Oberman is guilty by association with the policies of Israel, because it is the Israeli state that the graffiti was directed against?

I am not a particular fan of Sarkar, but I don’t think she should be prevented from speaking in BBC programmes just because I don’t always like what she says.

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Chris Draper's Answer to 'What did the EU do for Manchester?'

WONDERFUL!

Let's have more examples of how governments are really good for us on this allegedly anarchist website!

Or perhaps readers might instead consider a few facts, for example this list illustrating how the EU helps corporations transfer production to where the workers come cheapest!

Cadbury moved factory to Poland 2011 with EU grant.  Ford Transit moved to Turkey 2013 with EU grant.  Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia with

EU grant, owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers pension funds. Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to

Slovakia with EU grant.

British Army's new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.

Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.  Crown Closures, Bournemouth (Was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with EU grant, once employed 1,200.  M&S manufacturing gone to Far East with EU loan.  Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from UK along with

the patents all with with EU grants.

Gillette gone to eastern Europe with EU grant.  Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with EU grant.  Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with EU grant.  Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam  plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands, with EU funding.

Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of UK to Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.  ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year, using an EU loan for the purchase.

JDS Uniphase run by two Dutch men, bought up companies in the UK with £20 million in EU 'regeneration' grants, created a pollution nightmare and just closed it all down leaving 1,200 out of work and an environmental clean-up paid for by the UK tax-payer. They also raided the pension fund and drained it dry.

UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.  Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.

Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.  The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the

costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online. 

Swindon was once our producer of rail locomotives and rolling stock. Not any more, it's Bombardier in Derby and due to their losses in the aviation market, that could see the end of the British railways manufacturing altogether even though Bombardier had EU grants to keep Derby going which

they diverted to their loss-making aviation side in Canada.  39% of British invention patents have been passed to foreign companies, many of them in the EU The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.

The EU was designed and exists to coordinate STATE legal power to compel with the predatory power of corporations to exploit. The varied court-jesters (Union Bosses, Labour Politicians, Green Apologists etc) who take money from the EU and see a good career in toadying are predicatbly lining up to sing the praises of their erstwhile masters.  I would expect anarchists to look beneath such exhortations and examine the underlying power relationships. The EU is fundamentally designed to oil the wheels of globalisation, why on earth do you think it is so keen to covertly tie up TTIP?

Of course there is a window dressing of concern for the environment, workers rights etc but if you were mugged and your assailant handed you back a tanner for a cup of tea would you be grateful?

Don't vote for any politicians ever and for anarchy's sake don't endorse the EURO SUPER STATE but DO VOTE "LEAVE"!

Poland & the Union Busters!

It's like the old saying about buses: you wait all day for one to come along, and then two appear at at the same time. This week we have two new campaigns in support of retail workers in Poland, from two different unions, confronting two different global employers. When I asked why this had happened, I was told it was no coincidence. Polish workers -- like workers in so many other countries -- are under attack. In this case, we can help and we can make a difference. The employers are the cheap LIDL supermarket chain, based in Germany, which will be familiar to many of you, and Aelia, which runs shops in airports and is part of the Lagardere Services group, based in France. The famous Polish union "Solidarnosc" organized workers at LIDL more than a year ago, but the company is refusing to talk. The union has begun a series of innovative protests, including blocking cash registers by paying in small coins. Still, union representatives are being harassed and union leaders have been sacked. Solidarnosc, together with UNI Global Union, has asked us to send a strong message to LIDL -- please take a moment to do so: http://www.labourstart.org/go/lidl A newer and smaller union in Poland, Workers' Initiative, has asked for our help in a campaign for union rights at Warsaw's Chopin Airport. When workers at the Aelia duty free shop joined the union in May, the company reacted by sacking their elected representative and encouraged other workers to quit the union. This is yet another example of a multinational corporation ignoring workers' rights. Let's send them a powerful message too: http://www.labourstart.org/go/aelia Now please share this message with your friends, family, co-workers and fellow union members. Thanks very much! Eric Lee Which campaigns have I missed? Click here to find out.

Craig Murray on Thatcher

BY chance I knew Margaret Thatcher rather better than a junior civil servant might have been expected to, not least from giving her some maritime briefings during the First Gulf War. On another occasion Denis and I once got absolutely blind drunk in Lagos – I had been given him to look after for the day, and the itinerary started with the Guinness brewery and went on to the United Distillers bottling plant, before lunch at the golf club. I had to reunite him with his spouse for the State Banquet and quite literally fell out of the car. Happy days.

I can say I was on first name terms with her – she always called me by my first name. Except unfortunately she thought that was Peter. I recall she came out to Poland when I was in the Embassy there and I was embarrassed because she knew me, and thus greeted me more warmly than my Embassy superiors. The problem was lessened by her continuing to call me Peter very loudly, even after I corrected her twice.

In person she was frightfully sharp, she really was. If you gave her a briefing, she had an uncanny ability to seize on the one point where you did not have sufficient information. She also had that indescribable charisma – you really could feel when she entered a room in a way I have never experienced with anybody else, not Mandela or Walesa, for example. You may be surprised to hear that in person I found her quite likeable.

Yet she was a terrible, terrible disaster to this country. The utter devastation of heavy industry, the writing off of countless billions worth of tooling and equipment, the near total loss of the world’s greatest concentrated manufacturing skills base, the horrible political division of society and tearing of the bonds within our community. She was a complete, utter disaster.

Let me give one anecdote to which I can personally attest. In leaving office she became a “consultant” to US tobacco giant Phillip Morris. She immediately used her influence on behalf of Phillip Morris to persuade the FCO to lobby the Polish government to reduce the size of health warnings on Polish cigarette packets. Poland was applying to join the EU, and the Polish health warnings were larger than the EU stipulated size.

I was the official on whose desk the instruction landed to lobby for lower health warnings. I refused to do it. My then Ambassador, Michael Llewellyn Smith (for whom I had and have great respect) came up with the brilliant diplomatic solution of throwing the instruction in the bin, but telling London we had done it.

So as you drown in a sea of praise for Thatcher, remember this. She was prepared to promote lung cancer, for cash.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/04/margaret-thatcher/