Murdered in Mongolia in 1935 aged only 29, the Welsh investigative journalist Gareth Jones is a national hero in Ukraine for being the first reporter to reveal the truth about the Holodomor – the 1932-33 genocide inflicted on Ukraine by the Soviet Union which killed over four million people.
A graduate of Aberystwyth and Cambridge universities, Jones – fluent in Welsh, English, Russian, French and German – was talented, well-connected and determined to discover the truth behind the momentous political events of the post-war period. He travelled widely to report on Mussolini’s Italy, the fledgling Irish Free State, the Depression-ravaged United States, and was the first foreign journalist to travel with Hitler after the Nazis had taken power in Germany.
Jones’ quest for truth also drew him to the Soviet Union where his reporting of the Holodomor incurred the wrath of Stalin who, in 1933, banned Jones from ever returning. In August 1935, on the eve of his 30th birthday, Jones was killed by bandits in Manchukuo – Japanese-occupied Inner Mongolia – while on a ‘Round-the-World Fact-Finding Tour’. Suspicions surrounding his death remain to this day, heightened by the close involvement of individuals with known links to the NKVD, the Soviet Union’s secret police. Drawing upon Jones’ articles, notebooks and private correspondence, Martin Shipton, the respected political journalist at Jones’ former newspaper, the Western Mail, reveals the remarkable yet tragically short life of this fascinating and determined Welshman who pioneered the role of investigative journalism.
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