Gareth Jones, the Soviet peasantry and the ‘Real Russia’, 1930–1933

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the British journalist Gareth Jones sought a particular truth of events during collectivisation in the Soviet Union by examining the experiences of the Soviet peasantry. His conclusions ran counter to certain narratives of Soviet progress that ignored or diminished the importance of collectivisation’s costs to the peasantry. Jones described to his readers what he considered to be the ‘Real Russia’, a place found beyond a veil of deception, which is referred to here by the term ‘Potemkinism’ (meaning the regime-managed representation of the Soviet Union to external and internal audiences), and clashed with those who thought his reports to be false. In looking at Jones’s example, we can consider how the peasantry appeared to a foreigner in their midst at a time of intense social stress, and in particular how certain observers framed their understandings of Soviet affairs.

KEYWORDS:

• Potemkinism
• cultural diplomacy
• collectivisation
• journalism
• fellow travelling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Nicholas Hall is Research Associate to the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust, Wolfson College, Oxford, and is commencing a PhD in History October 2016 at the University of Exeter.

Notes

1. Grierson (1942) refers to scores of works.

2. John Hoyland wrote of British ‘eagerness to learn about Russia, and […] the abysmal ignorance of our people regarding Russia’; thus he published an account of his visit (1933, pp. 1–2); Cicely Hamilton wrote of a friend ‘like other of her countrymen, […] curious to hear my impressions’ of the USSR, and the “emotional and therefore […] unreasoning public” that would devour accounts by observers, judging them in light of “prejudice or sentiment”’ (Hamilton, 1934, p. v); Kendall Foss: ‘“I want to see,” I explained. “One hears so many conflicting things about this dark and mysterious country that it is impossible to know what to believe. I’d like to know who is right – if anybody is”’ (Foss, 1930, p. 12).

3. Shaw’s response to the U.S.S.R. was more nuanced in private, but publicly he rejected claims of deception (Soboleva & Wrenn, 2012, pp. 164–166).

4. Jones was employed as a ‘foreign affairs adviser’ by Lloyd George over two periods: January 1930–Spring 1931 and May 1932–March 1933.

5. Even so, Jones described the Soviet Union as ‘Asia’ even as it was ‘territorially Europe’, where ‘fatalistic’ peasants lived lives ‘Asiatic in the past and present poverty’, in a country struggling ‘in vain to catch up many centuries of industrialism in the brief span of five years’. He considered the remedying of illiteracy in the countryside as admirable: he was by no means averse to modernisation in and of itself (Jones, 1933b, p. 8).

6. The Soviet Ambassador to Britain, Ivan Mikhailovich Maiskii, wrote to Konstantin Oumanskii’s deputy that Jones should be treated with ‘special care’, as ‘the impressions Jones forms will to a significant degree determine Lloyd George’s attitude toward the USSR’ (Cherfas, 2013, p. 789). On 8 April 1933, A. J. Sylvester, Lloyd George’s secretary, wrote an apologetic note to Maiskii after Jones’s reports on the famine appeared, detailing Lloyd George’s annoyance with Jones, who had claimed, erroneously, that he was representing the ex-Prime Minister. Rather than defend Jones’s conclusions, Lloyd George sought to distance himself (Cherfas, 2013, p. 795).

7. See Carrynyk, Luciuk, and Kordan (1988).

8. Fitzpatrick refers to James Scott (1990), where Scott describes ‘hidden transcripts’ of subordinate groups as ‘discourse that takes place “offstage”, beyond direct observation by powerholders’ (p. 4).

9. In autumn 1932, Jones complained to his parents of how the Western Mail used some of his articles: ‘[T]he Western Mail had huge headlines on “Growing Menace of Communism”, they seemed to be making use of my Russian articles as Tory propaganda. I am not going to be associated with Tories and Catholics of the Western Mail type’ (Jones, 1932). This did not prevent Jones taking a post with the Western Mail in April 1933.