Winterkill by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Twelve-year-old Nyl Chorny and his father Tato have just returned from inspecting their wheat field when they see hundreds of uniformed young people, part of the Young Communist League, marching into their village of Felivka, near Kharkiv, Soviet Ukraine. Also marching are the Young Pioneers with their red ties, and adult marchers in city clothes. 

When Nyl and his father reach their house, he sees his nine-year-old brother Slavko and eleven-year-old sister Yulia along with his mother seated at their kitchen table. With them are two visitors from Canada, George White and his daughter Alice. They have come to assist with Stalin's "five-year-plan", to modernize the Soviet Union. But instead of helping people like Nyl's family, they are taking away their farms and forcing them onto one large collective farm called the kolkhoz. Now Comrade White and his daughter Alice are taking an inventory of everything in their house including "the decades-old pysanky - colorful hand-decorated eggs". Alice is disturbed at the presence of the icons on the walls and the prayer corner and advises Nyl's family to remove them or at least hide them. Comrade White, sounding like the lead shock worker, Tupolev, tries to convince Nyl's father to join the kolkhoz, the farming collective. He tells Tato they will give him tractors and modern equipment for farming, and that they will be able to grow more grain and be better off. When Tato refuses, Comrade White calls him a traitor and calls the farmers who won't join, kulaks. 

Everyone is called to the village square where they see many soldiers and a tractor being driven into the square. Tupolev tells them that the Soviet Union is the only country in the world that manufactures tractors, but Nyl is skeptical when he notices English letters on the tractor. When Tupolev's speech is interrupted by the ringing of the church bells, he incites the crowd to murder Father Ivan and his wife and tear down the church. Nyl and his family along with the villagers watch in horror at the brutal murders and their church being destroyed by a frenzied mob. Comrade Tupolev doesn't allow the villagers to have a funeral for the priest and his wife, however Nyl's mother leads them in singing Vichnay Pamyat, an ancient chant sung for funerals.

 

The violence continues with the murder of Nyl's Uncle Illya outside his own home by Comrade Chort. A shock worker enters the house telling them that Illya's wife and baby daughter, Auntie Pawlina and Tanya, must leave the house immediately. He states that Comrade Chorny was killed because he resisted arrest for being a kulak. He also  begins emptying the house of all the Chorny's belongings. The shock workers destroy the compilation of old folk songs the Chorny's were collecting. 

When Nyl returns to his own home, across the street, he finds their house too has been looted; the bowl of pysanky destroyed, their icons missing along with their altar. In its place is a Soviet flag, a framed portrait of Stalin and miniature toy tractors. Nyl's sister Yulia volunteers to bring home the atheist altar she made at school, something that shocks Nyl. Nyl's family decides to move their hidden stores of grain in the hopes they can save some for themselves. That night Comrade Chort and his wife Yelena move into Uncle Illya's home.

A few days later, Tato tells his family they need to escape but Nyl's mother believes there is more danger in leaving. Auntie Pawlina suggests they go to Polish Ukraine, to Ternopil where she has cousins.  

Then one day after school, everyone is ordered to be at the meeting hall in the village council building, both villagers and the kolkhozniks. After Tupolev reads a speech by Stalin stating that steeling property and killing people was not part of the plan, the villagers demand the return of their livestock and property. Led by the women, they raid the kolkhoz to retrieve their stolen property. Comrade Berkovich tells the villagers that the government wants to send in troops to settle down the village. To avoid this, he suggests they need to show that they are working together. He encourages people to farm their land this summer. so there will be a good harvest.

The summer of 1930, Nyl and his father plant fields of corn, millet and wheat and harvest a bumper crop. Tupolev's estimate of wheat they will be paid for leads Nyl's family to once again debate whether to stay in Felivka or leave.

As it turns out, Stalin betrays the people of the Soviet Ukraine including Nyl's family. After a harvest supper and dance celebrating the bumper crop, at the invitation of Tupolev and hosted in the kolkhoz, the landowners are tricked into meeting in the village council room. While they are locked in the building, the military arrives and steal the villager's entire harvest including their stored grain and their vegetables and potatoes. 

Faced with a winter of starvation, Nyl and Slavko decide to travel to the Kharkiv tractor factory seeking work. After working there they learn that the tractor factory won't be functioning for at least a year and return home. Their family decides that Aunt Pawlina and Tanya will travel to Ternopil with the money they have saved. Meanwhile Yulia decides to abandon her family and move to the kolkhoz, against her family's wishes.

In the spring of 1931, after the death of Tato, Nyls, Slavko and their mother decide to plan to leave for Ternopil. During the summer, they forage and save, storing  much food for their journey. However, their plans are thwarted by Comrade Chort who has their food confiscated and their mother jailed. After being released from jail, Nyl's mother is never the same again.  The following winter is spent hungry and then Nyls' mother is murdered by Chort in the spring of 1932. Nyls now realizes he and Slavko must leave Felivka if they are to have any chance of survival. Somehow they must make the journey to Ternopil to meet up with Aunt Pawlina and Tanya. But a chance meeting with Alice, changes everything for Nyls.

 

Discussion

 

Winterkill is a timely novel that explores the Holodomor,famine of 1932-33, a man-made catastrophe orchestrated by Josef Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union in the 1930's.  In Ukrainian, holodomor translates to "death by hunger". The main victims of the holodomor were Ukrainian farmers and rural villagers. Stalin, fearful of the growing Ukrainian culture in Soviet Ukraine began to systematically murder Ukrainian intellectuals, church leaders and those who supported previous Ukrainian cultural initiatives as well as the Ukrainian peasant class. As part of Stalin's Five Year Plan to collectivize agriculture, Ukrainian farmers were forced to give up their small farms, their livestock and their grain harvest. Any resistance was met with brutality, murder and forced deportation. Those who resisted were labelled kulaks and punished with deportation or simply murdered. Stalin instituted strict grain quotas that could not be met with the dissolution of the smaller farms; his collectivization of farms was a failure. When villages could not meet their quotas, the Soviet Red Army prevented people from leaving to find food and many starved to death.

 

In Winterkill, the story opens with the residents of Felivka being pressured to join the collective farms called kolkhoz, by giving up their farms and their land as well as their livestock. To effect this change, "shock workers" went from house to house inventorying everything possession, including foodstuffs and livestock. One of the workers was Alice White and her father.

 

Skrypuch incorporates many historic events known to have occurred in Soviet-occupied Ukraine, including the murder of Orthodox priests and the complete destruction of churches and family altars, the labelling of Ukrainian farmers unwilling to join the kolkhoz as "kulaks" , a demeaning term that meant "rich peasants", who were then deported or murdered, and had their property taken from them. the stealing of almost every scrap of food produced by the farmers including their own vegetable gardens, and the murder/deportation of those who resisted. Skrypuch wants her readers to know the reality of the Holodomor, which was not recognized as a genocide until 1953, based on the conditions set out by Raphael Lemkin, an international criminal law expert.

As events play out in the novel, eventually Nyls and his brother Slavko are left to fend for themselves and they realize they must flee if they are to survive. However, Slavko decides to stay at the factory while Nyls is determined to escape to what he hopes will be the chance at a better life. With the help of Alice, who has come to understand that they too were duped by Stalin, they encounter a Canadian journalist named Rhea, who advises them to escape to Russia.

Several characters in the novel are based on either real people or from the testimony of people who lived through the Holodomor. Rhea is based on Rhea Clyman, a Polish- Canadian journalist who was reporting on the Soviet reforms in the late 1920's. She soon became disillusioned with what she saw. Her travels by car in 1932 with two other women, through what she called the "Famine-Lands", from Moscow to Kharkiv revealed abandoned villages, starving people, and empty stores. Rhea was one of the first to report on the famine and she managed to publish forty-four feature articles in the Toronto Telegram from 1932 to 1933. Rhea also reported on the large number of "kulaks" who had been deported and were working as slave labour in the Soviet Union. Skrypuch has dedicated Winterkill to Rhea Clyman and her determined effort to get the truth out about what was happening in Soviet Ukraine.

The character, Alice White is based on a real person, Alice Mertzka whom Rhea and her companions met in Kharkiv. Alice explained that she was from Toronto and that she and her father who had been employed at Massey Harris in Canada, had come to work at the tractor plant in Kharkiv. However, they too found themselves starving. In Winterkill, Alice is confronted by Nyls who explains to her what is really happening and how her simple "inventory" resulted in the destruction of his own family. This leads Alice White to attempt to make amends by helping Nyls to escape the famine.

The main character and narrator, Nyls is based on Skrypuch's interviews with survivors and her research of survivor accounts of the Holodomor. Nyl's is an intelligent, thoughtful boy who witnesses the complete destruction of everything he has known: his village and his way of life, as well as the betrayal of his family by his sister and the loss of his beloved parents. Through his eyes, young readers come to experience this loss and hopefully learn more about this historic genocide.

Winterkill is well-written but does contain a some violence including brief descriptions of brutal murders and starvation. For that reason it is recommended for older readers aged 12 and up. Skrypuch  has provided an Author's Note at the back as well as a map of Soviet Ukraine and the loss of population as a result of the Holodomor genocide. Young readers are to be encouraged to explore this topic further. Another excellent offering by this well known, award-winning Canadian author, timely, in light of the current Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Book Details:

Winterkill by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
New York: Scholastic Inc.     2022
266 pp.

DVD: Mr. Jones

Mr. Jones is a deeply flawed film that attempts to portray the efforts of a Welsh journalist to uncover the truth about events occurring in the Soviet Union in the early 1930's. At this time much of the country but especially the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the Volga region was experiencing a severe famine. The famine in the Ukraine became known as the Holodomor; a catastrophe in which millions of Ukrainian peasants were deliberately starved to death as a result of Stalin's policies. The Western media was complicit in this crime against humanity as they knew what was happening but failed to report on it.

The film opens with scenes of squealing pigs as they feed on a farm,dissolving quickly into scenes of George Orwell beginning work on his novel, Animal Farm. In a voice over, Orwell states, "...The world is being invaded by monsters, but I suppose you don't want to hear about that. I could be writing romantic novels, novels people actually want to read...But if I tell the story of the monsters through the talking farm animals, maybe then you will listen, then you will understand. The future is at stake, so please read carefully between the lines."

From this, the film moves to Gareth Jones, foreign adviser to David Lloyd George addressing his cabinet. Jones tells them about being on a plane with Hitler and Goebbels and thinking if the plane were to crash, the course of history of Europe would be changed. Jones believes the Reichstag incident (fire?) was a diversion and that Germany intends to expand into Poland. Goebbels told Jones that the Reich will last a thousand years. Jones is certain the next Great War has already begun. This is dismissed with much laughter. Jones is taken out of the meeting when a call from Russia comes in for him, but the line goes dead.

Later in his office, Jones listens to Stalin on the radio talking about how the Soviets are making grade strides in building their industrial capabilities. Jones is skeptical. His point to the Lloyd George cabinent was that in a war with Germany, England will need an alliance with Stalin. Ms. Stevenson, Lloyd George's secretary tells Jones that he has been let go. In his meeting with Lloyd George, Jones tells him that he needs someone who will tell him the truth about what's happening. He has no answer on the Soviet question but suggests that Lloyd George could send him to Moscow to interview Stalin.

Jones is able to obtain a press visa from the Soviet embassy in London. He contacts friend Paul Kleb to let him know he's coming to Moscow. Kleb tells him to talk to Walter Duranty about possibly interviewing Stalin and that he really needs to talk to him, that he's found something big, that it's worse than they thought. The line goes dead.

Jones arrives in Moscow where he is met by Duranty who gushes about the Soviets, telling him that they have achieved more in five years than England has in ten. He encourages Jones to go visit the Soviet factories and talk to the British engineers at Metro Vickers. Jones questions Duranty as to how Stalin is paying for his factories and Duranty indicates that "Grain is Stalin's gold." As they talk in Duranty's office, Gareth explains that he has no expectations about getting an interview but that he has many questions, such has how the Kremlin can pay for the widespread industrialization when they are broke. Duranty stuns Jones by revealing that Paul Kleb was killed three days earlier in a robbery outside the Metropol. 

At the Metropol, Jones learns his reservations are only for two nights, contrary to what he was told in England. He meets up with a group of journalists that include John Cushny and L.C. Thorton from Metro Vickers and Eugene Lyons from United Press. They take Jones to Duranty's party which features drugs, booze and plenty of debauchery.  At the party Jones learns that journalists are confined to Moscow. 

After leaving the party, Jones meets Duranty's "star" reporter, Ada. She tells him that Duranty is attempting to lure the Americans to invest in the Soviet Union, in order to move forward the revolution. Jones returns to Ada's apartment the next morning and learns that Paul Kleb was working on the Ukraine and was heading there when he was murdered. After leaving the Metropol, Jones gets a room at a hotel but shows up at Ada's apartment to use her typewriter. He tells her he's going to the Ukraine and to that end meets with a Soviet official - Litvinov?? who is duped into inviting Jones to tour the Ukraine. Ada gives Jones Paul Kleb's notebook and he sets out on his journey to the Ukraine by train with Litvinov. However, Jones disembarks well before their destination of Kharkiv and he begins his journey through the countryside.

Jones finds himself pursued by Soviet soldiers, encounters starving families, dead bodies, abandoned farms and villages and children who resort to cannibalism before being arrested by soldiers and thrown in jail. He is released on the condition that he does not report what he saw but Jones does report on what he saw in the Ukraine and is criticized and ostracized for it.

Discussion

It is always interesting to watch a film that attempts to portray historical events. Are the events portrayed with some accuracy? How much dramatic license is taken with history and how much sensationalism is injected into the story to engage viewers?   Mr. Jones tells the story of Welsh journalist, Gareth Jones whose journey into Soviet Russia and Ukraine in 1933 led to his stunning expose of  widespread famine raging throughout the entire country. It is a film that could have offered viewers a lens into these events but unfortunately, the film gets only the bare bones of the real story right. Viewers are left with misinformation and many inaccuracies about the people involved and the events as they occurred. 

To provide some balance, the following is a synopsis of Gareth Jones and how he came to uncover the famine in Soviet Russia, a famine most international correspondents were loathe to report.

Gareth Jones

Gareth Richard Vaughn Jones, was born in Barry, Glamorgan, Wales, on August 13, 1905, to Major Edgar Jones who was headmaster of the local school and Anne Gwen Jones. Gareth's mother worked from 1889 to 1892 in Russia as a tutor to the children of Arthur Hughes. The stories his mother told about her time in Russia left Jones with the desire to visit the country and learn the language. In 1926, he graduated from University College of Wale,  Aberystwyth with a degree in French and then later in with degrees in French, German and Russian from the Univeristy of Strasborough and Trinity College, Cambridge in 1930.

In 1931, Jones was hired by Dr. Ivy Lee of New York as a researcher for a book on the Soviet Union. This led to a trip to Soviet Russia with Jack Heinz II in the summer of 1931. A book was published anonymously that did mention that peasants in Russia and the Ukraine were starving due to the collectivization of farms. As the world sank deeper into the depression into 1932, Jones returned to England to work for David Lloyd George. By the fall of 1932, continued reports of widespread famine in the Soviet Union made Jones determined to return to the country to uncover the truth.

 In January and February of 1933, Jones first visited Germany where he not only met Adolf Hitler, newly appointed Chancellor of Germany, but was the first foreign journalist allowed to travel with new Chancellor on a flight to Frankfurt. In March, 1933 Jones set out from Germany to Soviet Russia.

At this time, most foreign journalists were not allowed to travel freely in the countryside. They were restricted to living in Moscow, but Jones was able to obtain a train ticket to Kharkiv, capital of the Ukraine. However, Jones got off the train near Belogrod in Russia. Travelling on foot, he journeyed through Russia and into the Ukraine, recording his observations in great detail in his diaries that are in existence today. People he met on this journey spoke of widespread hunger, death and indicated that conditions were even worse to the south, further into the Ukraine. Eventually Soviet officials caught up with Jones and he was put on a train to Kharkiv.  

Gareth Jones returned to Berlin in 1933, and his articles on the Soviet famine were published widely. They created a firestorm of controversy because they contradicted a series of articles New York Times reporter Walter Duranty's wrote, articles that won him a Pulitzer Prize. His prize was never revoked. Duranty was provided with many perks by the Soviet government and in return he wrote articles that covered up the failures of the Soviet collectivization plan, including the resultant widespread famine that killed millions.

Walter Duranty's article

Mr. Jones never really offers an accurate portrayal of the events surrounding Jones's trip to Soviet Russia in 1933 nor even his stunning expose of the famine in the country. At times it included people and events that have nothing to do with his story. For example, in the film's opening scenes, George Orwell is shown working on his novel Animal Farm. Gareth Jones did not meet or know George Orwell. And Orwell's novella, Animal Farm was not written at the same time as the events in the film but was authored in 1943 and 1944. By juxtaposing scenes of Orwell working on his novel, the movie implies that it was written contemporaneously.  

For a film portraying historical events, Mr. Jones offers no dates or timeline. It also incorporates many references without any context and misplaces others. For example, when Gareth Jone is riding on a train into the Ukraine he repeatedly questions the other passengers about Hughesovka, or Stalino. These references are connected to Jones but that is never made clear in the film. Hughesovka was named after Jones's grandfather who developed several industries in the area. In 1924 it was renamed Stalino. The film also misplaces a famous line attributed to Gareth Jones. He did not utter his prophetic line, " If this areoplane should crash, the whole history of Europe would be changed." to Lloyd George in a meeting but instead it was written as the lead sentence in his article about Hitler in 1933.

The film frequently states that Gareth Jones obtained an exclusive interview with Hitler and was determined to obtain the same sort of scoop with Stalin. However, Jones did not go to Russia to interview Stalin but to specifically investigate the many rumours of widespread famine that were being refuted or even ignored by the British and American press. In fact, Walter Duranty's articles which won him the coveted Pultizer Prize the year before, appeared to settle the question. But Jones was out to discover the truth for himself.

In the film Jones is aided by Ada, supposedly Duranty's "star". However, he never had a love interest in Russia. He was there to do a job. It's likely there was no Paul Kleb to give him a lead on where to go in the Ukraine. Gareth Jones knew what he needed to do in order to learn the truth.

Gareth Jones' stunning expose of the truth in Russia.

Jones's articles did not just focus on the famine in the Ukraine but instead reported on widespread famine throughout all of  Russia as well as the Ukraine. His article "Famine Rules Russia" suggested that the famine was the result of Stalin's Five Year Plan to industrialize Russia.  which destroyed "all that was best in Russia". His articles never cited carts of dead bodies or instances of cannibalism, like those portrayed in the film. But what he reported overall was in huge contrast to Walter Duranty's article only a year earlier. 

Gareth Jones was never arrested nor was he held in a Soviet jail. Instead he quietly left the country and returned to Berlin.

Director, Agnieszka Holland had the opportunity to produce a film that would inform an entire generation about Stalin, the reality of communism, the famine in Russia and the Ukraine that was caused entirely by policies of the Stalin government resulting in the death millions, as well as the coverup by Western journalists, desperate to keep on the good side of the communist regime. Instead, the film takes so much dramatic license with the real events, that the real story is mostly lost. This doesn't make the movie entirely without merit but viewers will be left wondering what is fact and what is fiction. Instead viewers should use it as a launching point for their own research, to learn more about what really happened. 

Information about Stalin's Five Year Plan can be found at the Library of Congress.

Readers can discover for themselves much more about Gareth Jones from a website his family maintains. His mother did considerable research after his diaries were discovered hidden under a stairwell in a suitcase.

The BBC website profile of Gareth Jones.

Image credits:

Gareth Jones: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/waleshistory/2010/03/gareth_jones_investigative_journalist.html

Walter Duranty and Gareth Jones article images: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/red-famine-anne-applebaum-ukraine-soviet-union/542610/