Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist, boards a train from Moscow to Kharkov, Ukraine, in March 1933. He disembarks at a local station and begins a trek throughout the country on foot, witnessing firsthand the miseries of starvation. Everywhere he goes, he encounters henchmen of the Soviet secret service determined to keep knowledge of the disaster from reaching the general population. The forced collectivization of agriculture by Stalin resulted in suffering and disaster; the policy amounted to mass murder. Jones succeeds in spreading the stunning news across the West with the help of Ada Brooks, a New York Times reporter, putting his powerful opponent, Pulitzer Prize-winning, pro-Stalin journalist Walter Duranty, in his place.