2018 Annual David Davies Memorial Lecture: Dr Anne Applebaum

On 8 February 2018, the David Davies Memorial Institute welcomed Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian and journalist, as she delivered the 2018 David Davies Memorial Institute Annual Lecture. The title of her talk was: “A tale of two journalists: Gareth Jones, Walter Duranty and the Ukrainian famine”. The lecture drew on Applebaum’s most recent book The Red Famine, published in September 2017. Applebaum talked about the contrasting reporting of Gareth Jones and Walter Duranty as the 1932-1933 famine, the Holodomor, was taking place. The Welshman Gareth Jones (graduate of Aberystwyth, the class of 1926) was the first to bring the terrible atrocities taking place in Ukraine to the readers outside the Soviet Union.

Anne Applebaum opened her lecture with a reminder of the situation in the spring of 1932, where the peasants of Ukraine were beginning to be starved. At the height of the crisis, the peasants were dispossessed of their food, money, clothes, and farm animals. The result was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century. This tragedy, deliberately caused by the Soviet government, was surrounded by silence, and concealed. Applebaum also noted that the British government knew about the famine but did not want to anger the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin by drawing attention to it.

Foreign journalists working in the Soviet Union at the time needed permission from the Soviet Foreign Ministry and very few were inclined to write about the famine, even though most, if not all, knew about it. The New York Times correspondent, Walter Duranty, was described by Applebaum as a neutral realist, useful to the Soviet regime, and so the Soviet authorities ensured he lived well in Moscow. As a result, Duranty had the best access of any foreign correspondent. Applebaum argued that what motivated Duranty was the attention and praise he received for his journalism in the United States. On the other hand, Gareth Jones, writing about European and Soviet politics as a freelancer, made a special request to visit Ukraine, which was unusually accepted in spring 1933. While there, he got off the train and, with no official minder or escort, walked through villages and recorded the misery enveloping the countryside.

Soon after leaving the Soviet Union, Jones held a press conference in Berlin on 29 March 1933, where he exposed the famine. This was followed by over a dozen newspaper articles. The Soviets were furious. On March 31st, Duranty wrote an article that mocked Jones, refusing to recognise the famine. Duranty outshone Jones then, as he was more widely read, and people trusted his writing more. The cover up was complete, and yet, in the past several decades, and particularly since the establishment of the Ukrainian state in 1991, the fate of these journalists has been reversed. In 2003, the Pulitzer committee debated whether to withdraw Duranty's prize. Jones has been subject to a biography, a television program and is seen as a hero and symbol in Ukraine.

Applebaum stressed that the Ukrainian famine was unusual in that it was deliberate, designed and carried out by the state to kill its people, much like a genocide. Yet, the Soviet state has refused to acknowledge the famine. Applebaum concluded by showing the detrimental effects of controlling reporting to hide politically inconvenient truths. Her lecture was followed by an extensive Q&A session with the packed Main Hall of the Department of International Politics.

The Annual Lecture and other activities of the DDMI are generously supported by the Gwendoline and Margaret Davies Charity. We should like to express our thanks and gratitude for its continued support.