Review by Booklist Review
One footnote to the Depression was the departure of unemployed Americans for jobs in the Soviet Union. Subsequently swept into the gulag, few of the few thousand who emigrated survived. Two who did have their personal testimonies incorporated into Tzouliadis' account of this obscure American exodus, in which the underlying tragedy was compounded by scant assistance extended to these U.S. citizens by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Citing diplomats' thoughts about the immigrants' status, Tzouliadis recognizes the Soviet chicanery faced by officials such as George Kennan but reserves his scorn for American apologists of the Soviet regime who were aware, or should have been aware, of the plight of the Americans. Singer Paul Robeson, who had his picture taken with an American expat baseball team; Ambassador Joseph Davies, who advised the purges were a response to genuine conspiracies; Vice President Henry Wallace, who declared nothing amiss after touring the gulag--these famous Americans of the period have their gullibility contrasted against the reality of Americans destroyed by Stalin. A searing history informed by moral sense and original research.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The strength of this history lies in the compelling stories it tells about the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans who moved to the Soviet Union only to be imprisoned or killed by the Communist state. Many of those tracked by documentary filmmaker and television journalist Tzouliadis came to the Soviet Union during the Depression seeking economic opportunity or because they believed in Communist ideology. After a quick romance, the harsh reality set in as they were sent to languish or die in Stalin's prison camps. When Tzouliadis focuses on individual stories, such as that of Thomas Sgovio, who was imprisoned for almost a quarter-century before being allowed to return to the West, his words leap off the page. Too often, however, he veers away from his main subject with criticism of American journalists, ambassadors, artists and fellow travelers such as Paul Robeson and Walter Duranty who were either taken in by Soviet propaganda or willing to overlook state brutality. These stories have been told elsewhere and with more nuance, and here they detract from what is otherwise a captivating history. (July 21) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
It seems incredible that millions of desperate or idealistic souls who believed in the revolution left the United States, fleeing the Depression, and flocked to the new Soviet state in hopes of starting life over. The fate of those who once had such faith in the Soviet experiment is tragically chronicled in these two works. Pringle (Insight on the Middle East War) presents his work from the viewpoint of an insider, foremost Soviet biologist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, who ran afoul of the regime when Stalin championed Trofim Lysenko, whose views were eventually discredited. Vavilov amassed one of the largest seed collections in the world and hoped to prevent the famines that had plagued the USSR and other countries. As the terror of the 1930s mounted, Vavilov apparently continued to believe in the revolution until it was too late. Left to languish in the Gulag, this "eminent plant hunter who had a plan to feed the world died of starvation," concludes Pringle. Documentary filmmaker and television journalist Tzouliadis traces the lives of immigrants to the USSR and their fate in the land of the revolution. Most eventually perished once the Stalinist state declared them to be enemies. This is a collection of heartbreaking stories about people who were neglected or ignored by their own government. The author presents numerous instances in which official intervention might have saved thousands of lives, yet officials, from President Roosevelt on down, found it inconvenient or untimely to risk disrupting U.S.-Soviet relations by peering too closely into the cases of U.S. citizens stuck in the USSR. The Forsaken is actually a grim testament of Stalin's crimes against his own people as well as the immigrants. With copious notes, it is highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Vavilov is written in a popular style sometimes lacking nuance on a subject that should still be of interest to academics as well as informed readers. (Photos not seen for Vavilov.)--Edward Cone, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The Cold War began in the 1930s, to judge by this narrative of strange events within the borders of the old Soviet Union. It's just that no one thought to tell the Americans. British TV journalist Tzouliadis turns up an intriguing tale in the undocumented Depression-era migration that took tens of thousands of Americans to the Soviet Union, recruited for their technical skills in a time of widespread joblessness at home. They did not have to be persuaded; a Soviet trade agency in New York advertised 6,000 positions and received more than 100,000 applications, Tzouliadis reports. Few were communists or fellow travelers; most listed disgust with conditions at home as a more powerful reason than "interest in Soviet experiment" for their exodus. One reason for disgust was Jim Crow, and African-Americans fleeing racism figured prominently in the wave of migration. Once in Russia, the Americans lived as Americans do abroad. Some blended in, others banded together, formed baseball teams, searched out their compatriots--and they worried when their children seemed to be "turning out just a little too 'Red' " after a spell in the Soviet school system. Things turned sour, though, after 1936, in the years of Stalinist purges, when all things foreign were suspect and the elite of Russian culture and politics were killed off. The Americans, one by one, started to disappear into the Gulag. Diplomat George Kennan observed that the Soviets justified this by unilaterally making Americans citizens of the Soviet Union, thus negating their rights. "Logically we should refuse to recognize the naturalization of Americans in the Soviet Union as voluntary and valid in the absence of confirmation," Kennan wrote, but instead the U.S. government did nothing--and would do nothing when, a decade later, Americans taken prisoner during World War II, even though allies, were shipped to the Gulag, joined still later by POWs during the Korean War. Tzouliadis's narrative--though rather tuneless--holds the reader's attention and illuminates an overlooked chapter in 20th-century history, revealing larger trends in relations between Russia and the United States that persist today. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
