Late news was suicide of Jan Masaryk... In my view, Jan Masaryk was thoroughly corrupt, who bumped himself off because he saw at last where his moral… - Malcolm Muggeridge

When a man is actually with God, and then sees what he has tried to do and in our terms done so marvellously. it amounts to something which is utterly inadequate. That's what I'm saying: that the steeple reaching up so far, far away, that Salisbury Cathedral has a beautiful steeple, but what is it compared with the sky into which it is reaching? It is in this comparison that one is aware of on the one hand the absurdity of our efforts, and on the other the inadequacy of them

All the evidence goes to show that the conditions in the Upper, Middle, and Lower Volga districts are as bad as in the North Caucasus and the Ukraine; in Western Siberia they are little, if at all, better. No one knows what supplies of grain the Government has at its disposal, but, as I have already pointed out, the food situation cannot improve before the summer and is likely to deteriorate. The spring sowing will be a critical time; all resources of the Government and of the Communist Party are to be used to make it a success. Already intensive propaganda is being carried on; and "political departments," manned chiefly by the military and members of the G.P.U., have been brought into existence in all parts of the country. These will be responsible for executing the Government's policy and, of course, vigorously carrying on the class war. Even so will it suffice? (...) In any case, it is certainly true that, unless the decay of agriculture that began when this collectivisation policy was first started and that has gone on at an increasing rate ever since is stopped, unless, that is to say, the Government is able to produce a better crop this year than last, there will be famine not merely in certain districts but throughout the country.

There were soldiers everywhere... They were well fed and the civilian population was obviously starving. I mean starving in its absolute sense; not undernourished as, for instance, most Oriental peasants are undernourished and some unemployed workers in Europe, but having had for weeks next to nothing to eat. Later I found out that there had been no bread at all in the place for three months, and such for as there was I saw for myself in the market. The only edible thing on the lowest European standards was chicken -- about five chickens, fifteen roubles each. No one was buying. Where would a peasant get fifteen roubles? For the most part – the few that remain – are sold at the railway stations to passengers on their way to the mountains in the south for a holiday or for a rest cure in a sanatorium. The rest of the food offered for sale was revolting and would be thought unfit, in the ordinary way to be offered to animals. (...) "How are things with you?" I asked one man. He looked around anxiously to see no soldiers were about. "We have nothing, absolutely nothing. They have taken everything away," he said and hurried on. This is what I heard again and again and again. (...) It was true. They had nothing. It was also true that everything had been taken away. The famine is an organised one.