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Two men tried. Ralph Barnes, of the New York Herald Tribune, and William Stoneman, of the Chicago Daily News, were known for their forays into what some called the "Real Russia." As correspondents for individual papers, the men didn't have to stay in Moscow to wait for possible breaking news as wire service reporters such as Lyons had to. In early 1933, traveling together, Barnes and Stoneman headed south through Russia and sent by mail their stories of forcible evacuations of entire towns in the North Caucasus. Shortly after that, Soviet officials began strictly enforcing a ban on travel for journalists. No correspondent could leave Moscow without formal permission of the Soviet government. Stoneman begged a censor for permission to travel to Ukraine, where millions were rumored to be starving. The censor flatly refused, telling Stoneman "as a friend" that he "had better postpone" his trip. Stoneman was one of the few Moscow correspondents to even ask. Once he was refused, it was clear that the story of the Soviet countryside, a story of starvation and deportation, couldn't be told by regular Moscow correspondents, all of whom were subject to censors and closely monitored by the secret service. It would take an outsider, someone who could move through the country on his own, without an interpreter, to expose the horrors.

A 27-year-old Welshman with a taste for adventure was just such a person. Gareth Jones had twice before visited the Soviet Union, where his fluency in Russian allowed him the freedom to travel and communicate. Jones could sneak into the Soviet countryside and find for himself a story few others were telling.   

Jones was intellectually – but decidedly not physically – imposing, with jug ears, short, dark hair and large round glasses. More than a reporter or student of history, Jones was uniquely prepared to tell a story about the dark side of the Soviet experiment. Although young, he had a rare combination of academic, professional and journalistic experience. The son of a headmaster, Jones left his native Wales for university, graduating from Trinity College in Cambridge in 1929 with high honors in German, French and Russian. He honed his Russian when he spent time with immigrant families during stays in Britain and America. He had language skills that few, if any, of the British and American correspondents could rival. Although he'd dreamed of working as a journalist, until now he'd made his living as a foreign advisor, first to former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and later to American public relations icon Ivy Lee.

As a young intellectual, Jones wanted to believe in the Soviet experiment. He was captivated by Bolshevik ideas of educating "even the humblest peasant," of industry that benefited the workers, and of a classless society. "Then," he would write later, "I went to Russia." The first of his Russian trips had been on behalf of Lloyd George, the second on behalf of Lee, as a guide to Jack Heinz, heir to a culinary empire. This time, however, Jones was traveling for himself.

In March 1933, Jones arrived in the USSR with a tourist visa and an eye toward escaping Moscow and secretly reaching the "real Russia," a place he'd found on previous visits to the Soviet empire. He dreamed of writing a book about his travels. But to have any travels at all, he knew he had to do more than visit Moscow.

Shortly after arriving, Jones went to the British embassy in Moscow and asked for advice about how to best travel in the Soviet countryside. "It is dangerous now," a diplomat warned. "But if you really want to go, do not tell any communist, for you will be stopped. Then beware of walking by night, for you will be attacked and your food will be taken away from you, and everything you have, perhaps even your life, will be lost." Soviet authorities would never allow a foreigner to buy a train ticket to a small town, the man at the embassy explained to Jones. If Jones really wanted to see the countryside, the man told him, he should buy a ticket from Moscow to another big city. Then, somewhere along the way, he might slip off the train and into the countryside.

That's exactly what Jones did. 

He bought a ticket from Moscow to Kharkov, then the capital of Soviet Ukraine. Jones was jammed onto a hard, wooden seat in the third class car, amid peasants, workers and a handful of young, enthusiastic communists. He pulled from his rucksack a piece of bread and began to eat. A piece of crust fell to the dusty floor. A glassy-eyed peasant dove on it and stuffed it into his mouth. Jones then took an orange from his bag. He hadn't been outside Moscow long enough to realize the commotion a simple piece of fruit might cause. He tossed the peel into a spittoon. The same man who salvaged his bread crusts fished out the peel and shoved it into his mouth. As he was so adept at doing, Jones struck up a conversation with him. 

The starving peasant was from a nearby village. In desperation, he told Jones, friends and neighbors had pooled their last pieces of silver and gold and sent him to Moscow to buy bread. But his bread had been stolen. "And now they will wait for me every day in the village," he told Jones. "They will expect bread and they will get death instead."

At one stop, a few hours after leaving Moscow, a man approached Jones and whispered to him in German. "Tell them in England," he said, "that we are starving and getting swollen."

Eventually the train came to a stop at a collection of wooden huts.  Jones had traveled almost 400 miles from Moscow.  He was still 100 miles from Kharkov.  It was then he saw his chance to escape into the countryside. He pulled his rucksack over his back and headed for the door. "Be careful," warned a fellow passenger, a young, enthusiastic communist. "The Ukrainians are desperate." Jones stepped into the snowy expanse as the train lurched and pulled away.

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