Jones serve the important purpose of exposing these forgotten historical atrocities. You likely won’t find it on any mandatory curriculum, and mainstream film studios won’t make dozens of films about it. The Soviet government didn’t acknowledge the famine until 1983, and even then they lied about the number of deaths and the fact that they had caused it.Įven today, the Russian government and various socialist and communist groups around the world deny the severity of the Holodomor and believe it is either capitalist or Western propaganda. It was only until the 1950s that the genocide began to be discussed when the Soviet Union’s falsified population data could no longer account for the serious population decline. A few others tried to spread the truth about the forced famine at the time, including Malcolm Muggeridge (who graced the pages of this publication on numerous occasions). ![]() While the world didn’t know about the Holodomor during Jones’ lifetime, eventually the atrocity came to light. The story of the Holodomor is something that more people should know, and this film is one of the few out there that even covers it. ![]() The film features solid acting and powerful cinematography the only weak point of the film is Jones’s ahistorical and shoehorned romance with a fictional Anglo-communist journalist, Ada Brooks (Vanessa Kirby). The film ends bleakly with a brief line about how Jones was killed by probable Soviet assets in 1935 while reporting in China. Because Duranty is an established Soviet correspondent, having won a Pulitzer the previous year, and Jones is a relatively unestablished newcomer, Jones is considered to be a liar and a quack. In his view, accomplishing the Soviet vision is worth covering up the death of a few million Ukrainians. ![]() But Walter Duranty publishes a counter-story in the New York Times that denies the reality of the famine. Jones decides that it is worth the lives of the six British citizens and the political and economic fallout to expose the evil Stalin and his cronies are committing in the Ukraine, and the Manchester Guardian publishes his shocking findings. George Orwell (Joseph Mawle) offers some support, stating that the truth is important, despite his own socialist views. Lloyd George worries that such a story would harm relations between the USSR and Britain. All the journalists in Moscow are true believers in communism, and won’t back his claims. The condition of release is silence no one must know of the horrors in the Ukraine, or captured British “spies” will be executed.īack in the United Kingdom, Jones struggles with releasing the horrors he witnessed. Jones is eventually captured, but because of his close relationship with former Prime Minister Lloyd George (Kenneth Cranham), he is conditionally released. Ukrainian grain was shipped elsewhere and food was confiscated while the people starved, outside aid was rejected, and Ukrainians were prevented from leaving. What Jones discovered would later be known as the Holodomor, the forced starvation of somewhere between three to 12 million Ukrainians. Pursued by Soviet authorities across a monochrome wasteland, Jones discovers Ukrainian peasants willing to give up their coats for a loaf of bread, empty villages, and children resorting to cannibalism. Jones quickly discovers that what was once considered the “breadbasket of Europe” is no more.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |