An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia - The Forsaken

Very interesting topic and well written book. I happened to meet several people who were children of those poor American killed in USSR. That is fascinating story by itself. Reading this book was very enlightening.

The complicity of the FDR and Truman administrations in allowing American deaths during the "terror" in USSR is clearly on display. Further proof, if any is needed, that governments care not a twit about individual citizens and their rights.

Tim Tzouliadis has written a gripping account of the wholesale abandonment of the American citizens who were: naive, committed and fortune seekers. His listing of those ignored and abandoned is chilling. What is amazing is that I read of not one lower rank embassy staff member doing anything. The Davies of this world one understands. There with us today - career minded, rich, elitist, indifferent to the needs of anyone beneath them in stature. I still do not understand why no one did anything for these poor souls.

One glaring omission in this work, as detailed in "Coming Out Conservative: An Autobiography" by Marvin Liebman ISBN 0811800733, pp. 87-88 of Wallace's account of his visit to Magadan, was the following:

"Suddenly, a woman ran from the ranks and threw herself at Wallace's feet. She screamed in Russian how the prisoners were being treated, how they were dying, how they were innocent, as innocent as the snow at his feet. `Please,' she sobbed, `please help us.'

She was taken away, of course, while Wallace's translator told him that she was mentally ill and he could not understand what she was saying... I subsequently discovered that Wallace's translator that day had been Owen Lattimore..."
Wallace spent some 24 days on this 'mission'.

I highly recommend this book especially the author noting the infiltration of our state and war dept. by active Communist agents - White, Hiss, Hopkins, Lattimore - these evil men and their flunkie acolytes.

A great work and once more the 'bear' is transforming itself back to what it was before 1991 - a monstrosity that still refuses to reveal the evil committed in the name of 'justice'.

Scarier than any Orwellian novel, The Forsaken takes us on a journey into the terror that was unleashed upon Russia by Stalin. The author follows the Americans that were lured to the USSR by the promise of a better life, free from the depression that was paralysing America at the time. For a while their life was good and all that was promised to them seemed within reach. Then Russia was plunged into the Terror where you could trust no one not even your children.

The Americans soon found themselves being taken away in the middle of the night, across the vastness of the Motherland and prisoners in the massive Gulag system. Feeding the economy through the natural riches found in Russia they bleed, suffered and died for their piece of socialist paradise.

The author does more than tell the tale of these unfortunate souls, he uses them as introduction to one of the most heinous crimes ever committed. For around 20 years the average Russians new nothing but fear and paranoia, no one was safe. He also looks at how the American government buried their heads in the sand and ignored pleas from the families left in the US to find their family members.

This book is a masterpiece of historic research and writing. The author strikes a great mix of politics and the human side to Stalin's great terror. This book rings true in the old adage, the victor writes the history, as the world for so long was unaware of this great tragedy. This book is an immensely important piece of work.

Almost all the other reviewers agree that this book is a winner. Unemployed or underemployed Americas are lured to the "full employment" Soviet Union during the Great Depression. Many are left-wing ideologues who have bought into the Soviet "dream." Their story begins with education, baseball teams and comradeship, until they are no longer needed. Many are arrested and disappear from history. Many get no help from the USA for a variety of reasons. A very good book. Well footnoted, LARGE bibliography, detailed index.

It is as Solzhenitsyn predicted in The Gulag Archipelago: "No, no one would have to answer. No one would be looked into." (Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956, 3:482; trans. Harry Willetts (New York: Harper and Row, 1978)). In this work, Tim Tzouliadis seeks to arouse an interest, to create an insight into the barbarities committed throughout the "socialist experiment" in Soviet Russia. Writing particularly to an American audience, Tzouliadis recounts the story of the lost thousands of American to the oppression of the Soviet state. Virtually unknown to Americans is that the existence of these thousands was well-known to U.S. government officials and journalists stationed in the Soviet Union during the 30's, 40's, 50's, and 60's, people who simply remained silent in the midst of their fellow-citizens' disappearance and murders.

This book is a primer on the brutality of the Communist regime. For those unfamiliar with this history, it is an introduction. For those who have read Anne Applebaum, Robert Conquest, Vassily Grossman, John Haynes, Harvey Klehr, Elinor Lipper, the Medvedevs (Roy and Zhores), Richard Pipes, Edward Radzinsky, Varlam Shalamov, Vitaly Shentalinsky, Dmitri Volkogonov, and, of course, Alexander Solzhenitysn, the history is not new. But, the story of Americans who once played baseball in Gorky Park only to end up executed by the gun or hard labor in Siberia is news to most.

Particularly of interest is the author's revelation of the betrayal of their fellow-citizens by government officials at the very top of the U.S. government. While the identities of the likes of Harry Hopkins, Alger Hiss, Dexter White, Paul Robeson, Joseph Davies and others is well-known to those familiar with the history of the era, Tzouliadis provides new insights by relying on more-recently divulged information to establish the extent of the betrayal of traditional American moral virtues.

The bones of the victims of Soviet repression cry out for acknowledgement of their torture and degradation, as well as condemnation and judgment of their persecutors. The victims of Communist deceit, it must be recognized, are us all. It is time for the full story to be told.

In addition to his simply telling this story, Tzouliadis offers a moral tale that is supremely relevant today: those with utopian ideals and a fractured understanding of human nature cannot be trusted to lead a nation.

Read this book; its style makes it an easy encounter; its disclosures make it essential reading for those who would be intelligently informed.

...sustained campaign of state terror in modern history."

Knowing what they know now, most Americans would probably find it hard to believe that thousands of their fellow countrymen emigrated from the U.S. during the 1930s in search of a better life, to, of all places-Russia. Just as surprising is learning about the bad behavior of famous folks like Walter Duranty, Joseph Davies, Henry Ford, and Franklin Roosevelt, who Tim Tzouliadis calls out on the carpet for their complicity in what was going on with the situation Over There. The author cites plenty of examples of these guys' bad behavior. All were guilty of either having their head in the sand, pulling the wool over others' eyes, or both when it came to the truth about what was going on while Stalin was in power.

While some Americans that went to Russia supported socialism, others were just ordinary citizens. Unfortunately, by the time they figured out that the grass of Russia was not greener, it was too late for them to get back. Because of the political situation and policies regarding foreigners, they weren't able to leave the country. Family and friends wrote letters to officials about their lost loved ones in an attempt to determine their whereabouts to no avail. Many became Russian citizens (intentionally or inadvertently), after which American authorities would not provide assistance. Many of these persons ended up in the Gulag. The Forsaken follows the story of "An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia" chronologically, providing lots of facts, figures and other excellent information on the subject. Similarly informative: Gulag by Anne Applebaum. Easier reading but just as good: Alexander Dolgun's Story, 11 Years in Soviet Prison Camps by Elinor Lipper, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov.

Following years of groundbreaking, painstaking research through archives on two continents, The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia is the resulting chapter from the little-reported pages of history of that period in which thousands of Americans, faced with a devasting Depression at home in the 1930s and lured by the power of the written word and an ideology of communism, immigrated to Stalin's Russia in search of the proverbial greener pastures. The book documents and details the background, the emigration/immigration, the tragic consequences, the complicity and the cover-up of American writers, journalists and academics, as well as the indifferences of both the Franklin Roosevelt Administration and, specifically, the State Department to history, even as it was being written.

Tim Tzouliadis, born in Athens and raised in England, is a graduate of Oxford. He pursued a career as a documentary filmmaker and television journalist; his work has appeared on NBC and the National Geographic Channel.

Written in a style sure to completely capture your interest from the first page, first sentence, you'll find it difficult, at best, to put down this riveting recount straight off the pages of history and from deep within the archives of America and Russia.

In the midst of America's deep Depression, many, searching for a better life, read an English translation of "New Russia's Primer: The Story of the Five-Year Plan," and, in the process, made it a bestseller for seven months and one of the highest selling nonfiction titles of the past decade. They not only devoured the book, believing that the grass was greener on the other side, but they implemented their thoughts with actions by immigrating to Russia to better their lives. Not only would they find the proverb to be untrue, but also, many times, they would travel the dusty highways of horror, tree-lined turnpikes of torture, and the abrasive asphalt avenues of death in their journey through truth.

Originally, "New Russia's Primer: The Story of the Five-Year Plan," had been written for schoolchildren in Russia--it offered explanations that were simple and alluring; the book's depiction of social progress and future happiness were what attracted the Depression immigrants. They read that socialism was no longer a plan, but that to create this socialistic utopia, strong hands were needed. Paucity of jobs prevailed in the USA; jobs were available and accessible in the USSR--for some, Joe Stalin's enticing invitation was simply too tough to resist--as the promise of the workers' paradise beckoned.

In the first eight months of 1931 alone, over 100,000 American applications to immigrate to the USSR were received by the Soviet trade agency in the USSR--and, for the first time, more people left the USA then arrived. That year, 10,000 Americans were hired to fill myriad occupations--they worked as plumbers, painters, barbers, cooks, clerical workers, service-station operators, carpenters, electricians, aviators, engineers, dentists, or librarians.

Some left as individuals, some were members of organizations; many brought their wives and children, albeit they were discouraged from doing so by the U.S. government.

On February 14, 1931, British journalist and New York Times correspondent Duranty called it "the greatest wave of immigration in modern history." This was the same New York Times correspondent, Walter Duranty, who is mentioned by The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, Inc., in part, in the paragraph below:

"Some prominent journalists of the time, such as New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, aided the Soviets in concealing their crimes by proliferating their propaganda in the West and slandering those who reported on the Famine in Ukraine. Mr. Duranty was even awarded the Pulitzer Prize for `Excellence in Journalism' for his reports on the Soviet Union and its `successful development,' while in private admitting that up to 10 million people might have starved to death."

Amidst the Terror, more than anyone else, it was Walter Duranty who persuaded President Franklin Roosevelt to grant diplomatic recognition to the Soviet government. As millions were being tortured and killed, the United States was making friendly overtures to Joe Stalin while opening a U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

This gripping history, eye-opening exposé of Stalin's Russia and how a true American tragedy was seeded, concealed, and denied is detailed and documented via extensive notes (pages 365-398), bibliography (pages 399-416) and index (pages 417-436).

A note to readers: as you encounter references to Ukraine, remember that in Soviet times "the Ukraine" was in vogue among Russians while that name was being forced on the country; however, Ukraine has been independent since 1991, and the country should properly be referred to by one word, "Ukraine."

The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia documents the `little reported' history of Americans losing their lives in the Gulag. Although their stories are revealed, more important is the exposé of the complicity of American academics, journalists, and writers, who accepted and reported Stalinist propaganda--they first encouraged the immigration; later, they denied evidence of Stalin's Terror.

And, to this day, The New York Times continues to proudly display the Pulitzer Prize for `Excellence in Journalism' that was awarded to its then world-renowned reporter, Walter Duranty. Is the New York Times interested in the truth? Apparently, not--not as long as that Pulitzer remains on display. The West, through its pro-Stalin policy makers, the indifference of the State Department, the cover-up and complicity of the academics, journalists and writers, and the American policy following World War II, accommodated the Soviet's actions. This is the story of the players in and the enablers of the American tragedy.

The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia is a remarkable documentary about a topic, which until now has been little reported, little discussed--but, is, nevertheless, much needed to be told. Five stars plus for outstanding reporting--an engrossing, enthralling read sure to generate much discussion as the American tragedy and the tales of the forsaken herald truth's triumph with transparency.

Addendum: Readers, you're invited to visit each of my reviews--most of them have photos that I took in Ukraine (over 600)--you'll learn lots about Ukraine and Ukrainians. The image gallery shows smaller photos, which are out of sequence. The preferable way is to see each review through my profile page since photos that are germane to that particular book/VHS/DVD are posted there with notes and are in sequential order.

To visit my reviews: click on my pseudonym, Mandrivnyk, to get to my profile page; click on the tab called review; scroll to the bottom of the section, and click on see all reviews; click on each title, and on the left-hand side, click on see all images. The thumbnail images at the top of the page show whether photos have notes; roll your mouse over the image to find notes posted.

Also, you're invited to visit my Listmania lists, which have materials sorted by subject matter.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s Communism/Socialism became popular in America. At the same time, America was going through a serious economic depression. Russia began advertising about how wonderful things were there, actively seeking immigrants. Even Henry Ford set up an automobile factory in Russia during that time and sent many workers to Russia to teach the Soviets how to make cars. This is the premise of "The Forsaken," but it doesn't come close to describing the totality of this incredibly important book.

Addictively readable, you will learn many things about the Soviet Union, Stalin, President Roosevelt, Communism, the US State Department, Russians, torture, imprisonment, slavery, and human nature, among other things.

Before reading this book, intellectually I knew about Stalin, I knew that he made Hitler look like a kindly grandfather, but until I read this book, it didn't really hit home. We have pictures of Hitler's concentration camps, but Stalin didn't allow pictures. Stalin had his minions murder tens of thousands at a time for months and years on end, paying them very nice bonuses for their murderous work, and then in paranoia, would have others murder these very men to keep his evil work hidden. And then those would be killed. And on and on.

To give a tiny taste of information I didn't know that is in this book, on page 249: "In Buchenwald, ... there were prisoners who had suffered in this camp under the Nazi and the Soviet regimes." You see, if you were Russian and captured by the Nazis, when your countrymen liberated your camp, you weren't freed, you weren't welcomed home, you were either shot or imprisoned. You were a traitor to your country.

As someone who is primarily a fiction reader, I can't recommend this book highly enough. Truth really is stranger, and far more horrible.

I read novels, mostly mystery stories, and intrigues that take my mind away from reality which can be depressing or just boring. I like history but rarely have the patience to read historical books although historical novels are enjoyable if written by good authors so as to incorporate a good adventure intertwined with some real history. This book is historical and factual and there is little if any plot but it is the most intriguing book I have ever read that is just historical without the added adventure to induce learning about history. I used to think, being 63 years old, that during my lifetime the Nixon watergate secrets were shocking but I had no idea. The story of Stalin and, or more importantly, the story of the American Government told in this book is enormously important, AMAZINGLY shocking, and something that is so horrible that one wants to stop reading from time to time and burn the book because what we did as a country was so awful. However, the writing is so good and the story told so compellingly you do not start a fire but instead turn the page. It should be read by all, not just for what it teaches us about the capacity and deriliction of human beings, but also because it is history that is readable.

In Chapter 19 of this book, the chapter opens with a quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt regarding the conduct of the war. He said that he may be entirely inconsitent, and furthermore, he was prefectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it would have help win the war. That statement is a perfect nutshell for the theme of this book. Thousands of Americans vanished behind the wall of the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s and FDR and his administration did little to help these unfortunate people who were looking for work during the height of the Depression. The author presents a compelling case in briefing the reader on the hidden holocuast that was not as pronounced as the Nazi atrocities, yet was even more violent.

The shame in all of this is that much of the evidence was covered up by the Russians as well as our own government for over a generation and was not brought to light until recently. FDRs alliance with the USSR to defeat Hitler must go down as the greatest faustian pact ever devised. Bravo Mr. Tzouliadis!!

By looking at a few of the 'critical' reviews, it's stunning to see there are still Stalin/Soviet Communism apologists out there. I doubt if those 'drive by' critics even read the book. I was stunned over what I learned in this book about recent history...I am a parent and I don't think this era if ever taught in school - my kids are graduating HS now and I have never seen a lesson on this period prior to and overlapping our involvement in WW2. Whatever happened to Soviet Studies? Don't see those on campus' much anymore...so important but being relegated to the dust bin of history. The fact that the death camps of the USSR were never liberated or visited or turned into living monuments to the horror of Soviet Communism is a shame for all of us. How can we ever say 'never again' if we don't finger ALL the culprits? Bravo, Mr. Tzouliadias, a phenomenal book.

To be honest, I bought this book thinking it would be about a bunch of Americans who turned their backs on America simply because times were bad or because they had a political agenda. However, the writing of the book made me sympathetic with the many of the people the author wrote about and by the time I finished it I really did feel sorry for these Americans who were duped into entering the USSR and then siezed into the gulag system. And no punches are pulled as opportunities to intervene on Americans' behalfs are discussed, lost opportunities thanks to fellow travelers, bureaucrats and politicians. And not only are the depression-era workers a subject for the writer but also American servicemen captured during WWII, Korea and the Cold War. Someday I hope a reckoning is made and the files will be freely opened for us to know what happened to so many of these men and women.

The full title of this excellent book is "The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia". It's a very readable non-fiction account of the lives of the many Americans who emigrated to the USSR during the Great Depression. In the 1930's the US was going through an enormous economic decline and rampant unemployment. The USSR seemed attractive to many Americans: the country was stabilizing after the October Revolution, in the middle of what was considered a grand social experiment - the first communist country. This was exciting at the time - a young country that had just overthrown Tsarist rule and was trying a new, radical form of government. Thousands of Americans emigrated, searching for work and prosperity, feeling like the original American pioneers looking for fortune in an unknown land. They found work, brought over their families, started a prosperous immigrant society. Russia in the 30's even had baseball leagues and English language newspapers. Henry Ford did good business with Stalin and helped him set up an automobile construction plant, manned by American engineers and workers.
In the second half of the decade, the Stalin regime started becoming more paranoid, arresting and detaining some of the original revolutionaries in its drive to consolidate its power. This process would become completely unhinged as the years went by, leading to the arrest of hundreds of thousands of people --- including the American immigrants. Many of them ended up in the Gulag "corrective labor camps" - concentration camps in Northeast Russia, mainly there to mine gold and later uranium in the most horrible circumstances. The vast majority of the prisoners died within a few months of arrival, necessitating ever more new prisoners to keep the gold flowing. It's hard to wrap your mind around the amount of people who died in those camps.
Meanwhile, the American embassy in Moscow was completely ineffectual in trying to protect US citizens or get them released from the Gulag system. One American ambassador actively misinformed Roosevelt to protect his own lavish lifestyle. The fact that most of the immigrant Americans were forced to release their passports and take on Russian nationality didn't help. The end result is that thousands upon thousands of Americans were basically abandoned to their fate.
Even more heartbreaking is the fact that some of the prisoners who managed to survive the camps were released after the second World War, only to be re-arrested when the Cold War broke out in the years after WWII. "The Forsaken" details the entire period from the early 1930's through the post-Stalin years, and even deals with some of the problems researchers encountered in the post-Glasnost era when trying to access some of the historical records.
This is an excellent book, well-researched and, despite the subject matter, very readable. The author deftly combines the personal stories of the American immigrants with the history of the era. The book is informative and touching at the same time. ****

One note. I had to find a second book to read because, after reading a few chapters of "The Forsaken" before bed, I had some really horrific nightmares - and this was even before I got to the more detailed descriptions of the Gulag camps. The book is very tasteful and never graphical, but it still affected me very strongly, so I read "The Forsaken" during the day only.

My Dad told us kids the story of Russian soldiers on the front lines battling Germany during WW II. When an order was given to advance, any soldier that would not go quick enough or simply refused would be shot by his commander on the spot.

As a kid, I thought to myself, "Wow, those Russians were pretty tough". After reading The Forsaken, I think the Russian soldier hesitated because he couldn't decide if death or capture by the Nazi's was better than facing life in Russia.

The Forsaken tells the story of Stalinist paranoia from the point of view of Americans who were drawn to the Soviet Union for jobs in the workers paradise of communism. Interestingly, these immigrant Americans brought baseball to Russia and the sport actually started to become popular. But as Stalin began to `cleanse' his country, the dream of a better way of life faded. Through his political police, the NKVD (Commissariat for Internal Affairs), everyone was a suspected traitor and could be detained for any reason. From the early 1930's to Stalin's death in 1953 people were executed, tortured and imprisoned in forced work camps or Gulags. This period is known as "the Terror".

I picked up The Forsaken because of its focus on America during that period. I am so glad that I did. I had no idea of the sheer scale of the atrocities that were committed; it is estimated that ten percent of the Soviet population were affected. I also had no idea how ignorant the US was to this travesty. It is truly an eye opener. The forsaken is a powerful warning of government out of control and government out of touch.

That so many U.S.citizens, including journalists and qualified engineers, came forward to emigrate to the USSR and help that country industrialize reveals both the depth of distress caused by the economic circumstances in the U.S. in the early thirties as also the high hopes instilled and projected by the Soviet experiment of a classless society.But in the result such a grand concept, noble venture led to the elimination of all but one of the leaders of the revolution. D.M.Thomas points out in his biography of Solzhenitsyn that the first politburo was three-quarters Jewish and we know that all of them, including leading figures of the Soviet revolution like Zinoviev, Sverdlov,Kamanev and Radek were tried for treason, abjectly confessed to their guilt and were eliminated at the behest of Stalin.Could those who took such a leading role in bringing about the Classless society all have turned against the very social experiment they were primarily responsible for ushering in? Nevertheless, as Tim Points out,an independent high-placed U.S. official like Ambassador John Davies attending the trial of Bukharin and others said that all the defendants were guilty.Bukharin, once described by Lenin as "the most able man in the party", was tried for having conspired to restore capitalism to the USSR, spying for foreign powers and for plotting to murder Stalin!But they all confessed to their guilt. Was it because of the tortures they were allegedly put to, or because they realized that there was no country that would give them refuge in the light of their anti-capitalist stance. Tim makes us wonder why the ambassador, the journalist Durante, Musician Robeson and Vice-president Wallace all paid such glowing tribute to Stalin and his administration despite all the evidence of the existence Gulags that was before them. Was it naivete or a wilful ignoring of the evidence that led them to such glorification of Stalin.
Gulag were necessary for the achievement of the targets of the Five Year plans in the USSR.Without overworked slave labour a rapid transformation of an essentially backward agrarian society into an industrialized nation would have been impossible.And as Solzhenitsyn says the ideology of communism gave the evil-doing of Gulags its justification.
The approach of US authorities before the war to the appeal of US emigrants to the USSR for help to return to the US seems to have been that these were Bolsheviks and, as such, it would be risky to take them back or that they having voluntarily chosen their bed they must be left lie on them. But as regards the US soldiers who were German prisoners of war and had been released by the Soviet Army, the attitude of US should have been different. But it seems to have taken a non-confrontist attitude to avoid a possible nuclear holocaust.
Perhaps, it could ultimately be said that Stalin paid his debt to the US for his inhuman treatment of US immigrants by the sacrifice of nearly nine millions of the Soviet Force in breaking the back of the Nazi army but for which US-UK losses on the western front would have been much heavier than it actually was.
Tim's book is an eye-opener. It shows how national policies over-ride pity for the individual.

The amount of historical information vis-a-vis our Russian "allies" and their real mission to control an entire population (more effectively carried out than Hitler's because it was never exposed...still!) is breathtaking...and confirmed my own sixth sense about Russia - that all was not as it appeared. Ever. Even the press was complicit. No surprise there. Well, things haven't changed at all, have they? Politicians and the press serve the "greater good" (their own), never the public. And anyone who believes otherwise should move to...Russia. This is an outstanding book and it makes me very thankful that my Russian mother was adopted by Americans in 1923 when she was just a baby living in a Russian refugee camp in China.

Tzouliadis forces your eyes open, and relates a history most Americans never heard of. In some ways, it matches John McCain's terrible secrets about his actions as a POW, and his deliberate efforts to hide those still MIA. THOUSANDS of Americans, including WWII and Korea POWs were enslaved by Stalin, along with millions of Russians. Most died. Prior to 1941, the Russians themselves estimate that 8-15 MILLION perished. Having a US passport was no help. Through the 1950s, if an American sought help from our Embassy, they were ignored, and it would lead to his/her arrest. A terrible story, extremely well told. A must read. Tzouliadis' book has added a very important chapter to America's (& Russia's) history.

I am definitely glad that I read The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia. Before I read this book I didn't realize the terror that people faced in Russia under Stalin's rule. I was surprised to hear of so many Americans being caught in the middle of these horrific events. In school we studied some, not nearly enough in my opinion, about the Holocaust and the evil of Hitler, but I don't remember learning about the torture of those living in Russia while Stalin was the leader. I guess reading this book was sort of a history lesson for me. The stories are tragic and it completely blows my mind that something like this could actually have happened, especially to Americans. I don't know how many times I looked at the picture on the cover of the book just to see the faces of those unfortunate men. The men posing in their baseball uniforms had no idea of the evil that they would face in the near future. With hope for a better life and wonderful opportunities they left their homeland to travel to Russia. Some traveled alone and some brought their families. With the Depression weighing heavy on Americans, many of these individuals were enticed to go to Russia where there were jobs and they could utilize their skills. However, they were basically being led like rats into a trap. I cannot imagine the fear and horrors that these doomed people faced. The frustration that the Americans must have felt trying to get assistance to get out of Russia and the hopelessness they must have felt when they realized that nobody would listen or help must have been overwhelming. I was angry when I read about people like Joseph E. Davies, the Ambassador to the Soviet Union. He lived in his own little, safe world and stood by doing nothing, turning his head while fellow Americans were sent to concentration camps and murdered. Family members turning against family members, confessions to crimes not committed and the innocent convicted and tortured. This all sounds like a movie or a terrible dream. I cannot imagine the helplessness of families back in America as they fought to find the whereabouts of their loved ones and tried to have them rescued and brought back home. Unfortunately, many families never did find answers and there was no closure. Yes, these individuals deserve to have their stories told. The Forsaken is a book that I will always remember.

Fascinating book about a little-known chapter in American History. I read the first 25% on a Saturday afternoon - hard to put down. Gripping account of optimistic Americans fleeing the depression to start a new life that was hyped by Russian propaganda and willing left-wing accomplices. After arriving they are caught in Stalin's "Great Terror" and shamefully abandoned by our State department. It is a reality check about what can happen when freedoms are taken away and citizens exist at the mercy of the state. It also provides an enlightening look into human nature - Innocent people looking for a better life who suddenly realize their critical mistake. Some act quickly enough to get out, but you can feel the pain of those who do not and suddenly realize that they are doomed. Also there are stories of cowardice from government officials and journalists who could have largely prevented this, but chose instead to remain silent or worse yet, to aid the enemy, in an effort to maintain their own comfortable trappings. I found my self often asking "what would I do in that situation?" An excellent read!

What I found most remarkable about this book was not that it contains revelations from newly-opened Soviet archives, but how much of it was based upon accounts which were published in the U.S. and U.K during the 1930s-50s, but largely ignored, in favor of Soviet apologetics by the likes of Walter Duranty in the New York Times; Joseph Davies in Hollywood, and even Owen Lattimore's account of Henry Wallace's trip with blinders to the Siberian gold mine gulag, in National Geographic!

To me, having never read The Gulag Archipelago, this book was a revelation. It's the absorbing story of American prisoners of the USSR and the indifference shown them by our government, particularly the state department. Most shocking to me, however, was his description of the gulag camps north of Magadan, where the prisoners were slowly starved while subjected to long days of labor in unearthly cold, 365 days a year, in the mines. It's hard to imagine a worse death. The Terror is also revealed in its wide scope, its cruelty and its arbitrariness.

Anne Applebaum in Gulag: A History discusses briefly the issue of foreigners in the Gulag. But she does not give us a figure as to how many were there. Elsewhere stories have popped up from time to time of notable American leftists who journeyed to the Soviet Union in the 1930s and disappeared into Stalin's system. This, finally, is a full account of these people and who they were and where they came from. The author attempts to claim that many of these people were 'ordinary' but this is probably far from the truth. Many of these people were beleivers in the Communist dream, as a time when Capitalism seemed to be failing during the Great Depression. There were also hard core subversives among them, true beleivers in the Stalinist ideology who were 'returning home' to fight for COmmunism. In the supreme irony many of these higher minded intellectuals who hated American, found that the USSR was capable of doing things ten times worse to them than the U.S would ever imagine doing to Communist radicals. THey were rounded up when they tried to have outbursts of free speech, they were beaten, raped and placed on trains to the East. Once there they were worked to death. Few survived. As foreigners they were especially suspect as Stalin's grip became even more paranoid. Americans were imprisoned along with many other people from all over the world who had come to experience the 'Socialist utopia'. These poor people were not the only one's taken in. The New York Times came to Russia in the period and wrote a glowing peice about the miracle of Stalin's Russia. It has taken 70 years for these stories to come to light. It is a pleasure to read this wonderful and important account of these lives who were shattered.

Seth J. Frantzman

I just read this book while vacationing in the Caribbean. A strange backdrop for reading what was a chilling account of the mislead Americans that emigrated to the USSR during the depression, whose number of victims could be counted among the millions that fell for the sake of the dangerous and flawed ideology that is communism. I have read countless books on the Soviets, so the atrocities that occurred weren't new information - though the well researched details on the US victims were. What floored me was the complicity of the FDR camp, Ambassadors, journalists, from the United States of America. It is shameful time in the history of US politics - and its failure to assist its own citizens.

The Forsaken.
Who: Americans believing in Soviet and leftist propaganda who left the US in the thirties to live in the "Worker's Paradise."
Where: the Soviet Union.
What: The emigrants were liquidated by Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders mostly just for being foreigners and the US did not lift a finger to help its citizens -- indeed, the US State Department and others were complicit in supporting Stalin.
When: 1932 to 1990.
How: The Revolution devoured its children and all fellow travelers (those useful idiots for a time but who are ultimately slated for liquidation (e.g. American liberals and leftists.)
Why: Because they (the Soviets) could. The State Department was riddled with Communists who doubled as Soviet agents, and so were the Soviet administrations (i.e. the list of Soviet Agents include Walter Duranty (who wrote for the New York Times & received a Pulitzer Prize for repeating Soviet propanganda), Harry Hopkins (Roosevelt's primary political advisor), Alger Hiss (our key man in setting up the UN), Harry Dexter White (set up the IMF), Lawrence Duggan (our man for China), Owen Lattimore (prime propagandist that anything bad about the Soviet Union were lies), Izzy Stone (looked up to by the likes of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather), and fellow travelers simply make too long a list to include here.

The book is a very sad tale of how the Soviet Union liquidated between 17 and 27 million people with the US giving a nod and a wink. One is tempted to ask why there is not a "Soviet Extermination" Museum alongside the Holocaust Museum in Washington since the Soviet crimes against humanity were greater than the Nazis'. Perhaps because most of the top Bolsheviks were Jewish, (the reason Hitler used the term "Jewish-Bolshevism"), but they too were liquidated in the end (except Kaganovich.)

The idea that the Americans caught up in the liquidation were "The Forsaken" is due to Roosevelt's stupid recognition of the Soviet Union, giving legimacy to a criminal government through his recognition and economic support, and the equally criminal non-actions of Ambassador Davies, Vice President Wallace, and literally ALL of the American journalists and members of the US diplomatic presence in the Soviet Union including the sainted George Kennan. Walter Duranty beat the drum with Soviet propaganda in the New York Times, setting the precedent for the newspaper to go increasingly far left. Even after Duranty returned to the US, he never set the record straight concerning the criminal actions of the Soviet Government and the existence of the huge Gulag and massive starvation in the early thirties.

Even worse were the actions by the US State Department that simply turned its back on the Americans being executed because they were Americans. No one, I repeat NO ONE in the US embassy gave a hoot. No one wanted to rock the boat and lose their high status, confortable life, and many privileges (including beautiful Russian girls or boys) by being kicked out of the Soviet Union. For the reader to understand this, the author needed to explain what life is like in the diplomatic corps and how those individuals feel they are above the law (actually, they are) and how comfortable their lives really are. Courage is somthing that doesn't exist there -- in fact they are there precisely for the nifty life of experiences in foreign lands where they enjoy high status and high incomes in relation to their hosts. Risking their careers to help fellow Americans simply does not enter their game plans. (I must state, my experience with these types is somewhat dated, so perhaps this has all changed. If you believe that, welcome to Neverland.)

The author's work also covers the presence of American POWs from World War II and the Korean War in the Gulag. However, the large numbers of American prisoners captured by the Red Army as it overran German POW camps in 1945 and their fate is lightly skipped over in this work. Since the number of these soldiers may range as high as 25,000, there is another huge group of "Forsaken" Americans still to be accounted for. The author mentions ancedotal evidence of some of these men, but then there is silence. Most authors in this area state that Stalin gained control over those POWs (and an additional 31,000 British POWS) to use as a bargaining chip to force the US and Britain to adhere to the terms of the Yalta agreements. When they turned out not to be needed, their continued existence was an embarrassment and extermination in the Gulag was the aproved solution. Unfortunate, EVERY American President since Roosevelt has known of the existence of this situation and has elected to do nothing about it.

My last point concerns the use of the confiscated passports of the Americans who emigrated to the USSR in the 30s. The Soviets obviously altered them for use by their intelligence agents to infiltrate the US. Exactly how many were used is hidden in the Russian archives, but there were many thousands of such passports that were confiscated.

All in all, this is a very fine book, but the theme of baseball in the Soviet Union, although it might have added a little human interest for some readers, was by and large superfluous. The writing was very good, although the sheer volume of the tragedy makes for depressing reading of repetitive events. Only the victims change -- the results are the same.

For those on the far-left in the US today, I recommend a serious read and comparison to comtemporary issues. Nothing Bush or Clinton have done compare in the slightest to the mass liquidations of people in the Soviet Union, and we all must remember than.

Buy and read this book.

A haunting book. A reminder of the personal strength of everyday men and women who sacrificed so much to follow what was thought to be their dream, (full employment, food, equality) only to turn into a nightmare. Forgotten by their country and unwilling to be helped by those who may of been in a position to do just that. They were not only left to rot in a hell but the complicit nature in which their country helped the Russians condemned them further. We in the western world can not truly ever grasp the horrors of their experience. A read for everyone interested in Russian history.

The other reviewers here have said all that needs to be said about the contents of this excellent book. What I would like to add is that it's not a page-turner, for the simple reason that, as the book progresses, each chapter becomes so depressing that you need a break before embarking on the next. You know it's not going to get any better.

The only relief is that the perpetrators of these evils all seem to get caught up in their own web and mercilessly dispatched, just like their victims.

America's darkest hour of Betrayal was during the Global Depression of the 1930's was written by Tim Tzouliadis entitled: "The Forsaken".

This book is about how America, during the Depression of the 1930's, and I quote from the book; "Lured American's to work in the Soviet Union. This is a POWERFUL book, as he researched for almost a decade, and how he obtained historical information through an American law; The Freedom of Information Act of 1966 in order for Tzouliadis to write this historically accurate book. The author wrote in detail how and why the American Government under Franklin D. Roosevelt, his Secretaries of the Treasury, Commerce, State, and the American Ambassador to the Soviet Union knew of the thousands of innocent American unemployed Trade Unionists plight, but ended in Gulag's throughout Siberia only to meet their deaths.

A must READ for those who seek the truth behind Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Joseph's Stalin's Five Year Plan.

The "Pen is Mightier than the Sword", and books bring knowledge in hopes that history will never be repeated.

"TO THINE OWNSELF BE TRUE" !

Hello,

Thomas Sgovio, one of the main persons in this book is my father who passed away in 1997. So many people have asked about my fathers book Dear America which he self published in 1979 with only 2,000 copies.

Our family has recently had the book republished due to the overwelming requests we have received from our tribute website to Thomas Sgovio.

We only have 400 books in English right now and they are for sale on the site.

There are also Italian versions of the book availaable. If anyone is interested in them, just email the website and we will have instructions on how to get and Italian version.

WWW.SGOVIO.COM
[email protected]

Thank You,
J. Sgovio

This is an extraordinary story of thousands of hapless Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union to work, had their passports confiscated on arrival and almost none returned. This is one of those untold stories that deserves much more attention for those who have any interest in cold war history. It is beautifully written, easy to read (although not an uplifting story) and extensively referenced.

I have read many books about Marxist-Leninism, its promises of equality and social justice and the enormous devastation and loss of life it caused whenever and wherever it took power. This book details the experiences of Americans who, during the depression, left the US to go to the Soviet Union and what they hoped would be a better life. What Stalin gave them was gulags, disillusionment and death, which is what communism also brought China, Cuba, Vietnam, Russia and Eastern Europe, Cambodia and many other countries. US liberals fought hard to promote Castro in his early days and the sandinistas in Nicaragua and still mourn the end of Allende in Chile. Anytime liberals hear the words "equality and social justice," they are overcome with emotion and good intentions. They should read this book and many more about where good intentions can lead. I was once a liberal. I no longer am.

The Forsaken gives information about American prisoners in the Soviet Union. Some of these prisoners migrated there in the 30s, and some were captured during WWII and the Korean war. Stalin's brutal policies are summarized in this book as well. I would recommed this book to anyone that has sn interest in history

I just finished Tim Tzouliadis' "The Forsaken." It was extremely well-written and compelling. I found it difficult to put down at times. I recommend this book to anyone with any interest in the history of totalitarianism and/or modern European history. It left with me with a desire to read further on the subject and the footnotes and bibliography are quite helpful. I did attempt to contact the author at his website but it is no longer in operation. You will not be disappointed with this book. It is unforgettable.

Tim Tzouliadis has written a welcome and important book that addresses the Soviet reality of Bolshevik Communism and its perception in the West from 1917 to the present day. American and Western European intellectuals of the 1920's and 30's were caught up in the Soviet fashion and it is worth reading the book just for the quotes of George Bernard Shaw (after his visit to Russia in 1931 - "Jefferson is Lenin" ... "Hamilton is Stalin" ... "Every intelligent Russian who has been to America didn't like it because he had no freedom there.") or Jean Paul Sartre (supporter of Kim Il Sung - "Any anti-communist is a dog" or "terror is the midwife of humanism").

This group of western intellectuals didn't actually go to live in Russia but many working and unemployed Americans were sufficiently impressed by the propaganda to apply for work there. The book shows that Amtorg, the Soviet trade agency in New York received 100.000 applications from Americans in the first 8 months of 1931 to emigrate to the USSR and arrivals of American immigrant at Russian ports were running of at least 1000 people per month.

The author follows the thin documentary record of these Americans as the Bolsheviks removed their passports and the U.S. government abandoned them while they were progressively subjected to the same violence, transportation and murder as the general population.

This is a thoroughly worthwhile part of the book, but an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance starts to creep into the account for any reader with more than a superficial knowledge of Russian Bolshevism.

First hand accounts of the Bolshevik dictatorship from the earliest days (e.g. dozens of them here,[Google: "A Collection of Reports, Bolshevism in Russia 1919"] delivered to the British government confirm the extreme random brutality against both Russians and foreigners, with a further theme being the Jewish identity of the Bolshevik leaders. This was confirmed by the American ambassador David Francis, who reported the situation daily in 1917 to the US government saying, "The Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90 percent of whom are returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution" (see David R. Francis', "Russia from the American Embassy, April, 1916-November, 1918 [1921]").

Tzouliadis ignores this central aspect of Bolshevism and doesn't say that Lenin's chosen heirs were all Jews (Lev Bronstein, Ovsei-Gershon Apfelbaum and Lev Rozenfeld). Stalin was a distant fourth in the race for absolute power but he cleverly gained advantage by setting one against the other while building his private party organization (excellent book here is Robert Service's "Stalin: A Biography").

The relevance is that Stalin implicitly entered an alliance with Soviet Jewry awarding them a special protected status (numerous declarations that anti-Semitism was punishable by death) and used them for the majority of his top administrators although they only comprised 2% of the Russian population. There's none of this in "The Forsaken" despite the highly relevant fact that his Americans all ended up in a Gulag system designed and run by Jews (NKVD heads Genrikh Yagoda and Yakov Agranov, Gulag death camp heads, Naftaly Frenkel, Matvei Berman, Lazar Kogan, Aron Solts and Yakov Rappoport + Lazar Kaganovich who personally planned and supervised the murder of at least 3 million Ukrainians in the death famine of the winter of 1932/33 - disputed by Ukrainians who put it at 5 million+ -)

If one follows George Orwell's dictum that; "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If this is granted, all else follows", then Yagoda, Kaganovich and Frenkel were Jewish mass murderers who used absolute power to organize and execute the largest slaughter of Christian Europeans that the world has ever seen. The author deflects attention from this essential truth by only emphasising the 1937+ period when Stalin, greatly impressed by the popular nationalist based success of his soon to be ally Hitler, proceeded to turn against his heretofore Jewish administration allies in favour of ethnic Russians and Russian nationalism.

Saying that Jews were victims of Bolshevism has the same Doublespeak status as George Bernard Shaw's statement that "Stalin is Hamilton" (with perhaps the best recent example being Anne Applebaum's deceptive Ministry of Truth effort, "Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps")

Unfortunately the truth can only be found outside Party approved media, with the clearest statement probably being David Duke's recent samizdat hit "The Secret Behind Communism " (Usually out of stock on the store but available on his website).

In the 1930s Depression, for the first time in US history, more people were leaving America than arriving. They were going to Soviet Russia, writes Tzouliadis, to escape the economic misery resulting from "the maniacal exuberance of Wall Street financiers". What they found, instead of economic security, was `The Terror', Stalin's murderous repression of millions of socialists and ordinary citizens.

The Americans found work but soon it was to become the work of the forced labour camps. As Stalin consolidated his grip on power, and indulged a crude nationalist suspicion of anyone from the capitalist countries as spies for enemy states, the attentions of the secret police upon the Americans in Russia escalated.

As Stalin's Terror wiped out the first generation of Bolshevik revolutionaries, many millions more, including foreigners, were arrested, to be shot straight away or to perish cruelly from the brutality, hard labour, starvation and sub-zero temperatures of the Gulag. The socialist credentials of the `political emigrants' made them the biggest target.

Washington was reluctant to help its citizens, especially the political radicals and communists. The many Americans who desperately besieged the American Embassy in Moscow seeking to return to the US were often arrested on the streets outside the Embassy, denied sanctuary in it or not given asylum.

During the temporary wartime alliance between the US and the Soviet Union after Nazi Germany's invasion of Russia in 1941, the US State Department became even more reluctant to help its citizens despite having significant economic leverage through its program of `Lend-Lease' aid.

With Stalin's death in 1953 came uprisings and strikes by labour camp prisoners, which, although met with executions, hastened the closure of the camps. Stalin's successor, Nikita Kruschev, ordered the release of millions of prisoners from 1954 before declaring a general amnesty in 1956 as part of his (limited) de-Stalinisation.

Tzouliadis' book presents a compelling narrative of violence and suffering, and offers further valuable documentary evidence of the degradations of Stalinism as played out on its American victims, but the rare forays into analysis by Tzouliadis never rise above a casual anti-communism. The Gulag, Tzouliadis asserts, was "the hidden endpoint" of the Bolsheviks' "grand experiment in human evolution, the futile attempt at the perfectibility of mankind". Lenin was "the initiator of the use of terror by the Soviet state", he adds, and the Terror was the "grim logic" and inevitable outcome that linked Lenin with Stalin and, for good measure, Pol Pot, in the nightmare of socialism.

What this fable of Marxist Original Sin ignores is that Stalinism represented a break with the democratic vision and egalitarian ideals of history's first socialist revolution. For Tzouliadis, however, Stalin was a bona fide Marxist whose ruthlessness made him the most successful of a bunch of rival Bolshevik monsters.

Nowhere does Tzouliadis broach any explanation of Stalinism as the political expression of the bureaucracy in a putative workers' state whose working class had been physically and politically weakened through years of imperialist war, invasion, civil war and famine in a backward country, isolated from salvation through socialist revolution in the developed west. The social roots of Stalinism lay in that privileged national bureaucracy, not in proletarian democracy and revolutionary internationalism. Stalinism was a negation, not a continuation, of socialism.

Although Tzouliadis' book is not a socialist analysis of Stalinism, it does, inadvertently, show that it was socialism, as personified in the persecuted American socialists and union activists in Russia, that was utterly betrayed by Stalinism.

"all its horrors of imperialism didn't come close in scope to Stalin."

That is a white supremacist/anti-Communist rationalizing for justifying the continued exploitation and genocide by capitalism of people of colour and working classes of all races. It goes on today with diamonds, chocolate and sweatshops. Pro-Life, Anti-Communists still pen their diatribes while wearing clothing made in China, a country where woman are forced into abortion at nine months. It also uses the deaths of millions of innocent people in the USSR as an armament NOT in sympathy. Mr. Tzouliadis does not care at all.

The author wants Paul Robeson condemned with no historical or racial perspective for believing in international socialism as a means to end white supremacy. I would agree with some of his views , if the US had ever gone after the KKK, George Lincoln Rockwell and those who lynched blacks unabated. CONTELPRO earmarked 85% towards black/Leftist groups and 15% towards white hate groups-this is historical record in the "Free world." NOT ONE LYNCHER ever served time in jail until the early 60's and even then sentences were a joke. Not one. Had THEY been sitting at HUAC with the KKK, if the Cold War US and Europe had made it their mission to rectify the foul and insufferable mass murder of people of color and had gone after crimes against humanity towards colonial peoples and the rape of resources (or even go after Anthony Blount) then I would see his wholesale condemnation of USSR as just a tad more viable.

But the US/Western Europe did the INVERSE, they took, stole, raped, murdered, covered it up, gloated over it and still are. To those who were idealistic and hopeful the USSR transformed the prospects of oppressed people everywhere. Paul Robeson was visiting the USSR less than two decades into it existence. Given what he was faced with, not issuing a public statement regarding the purges (and therefore placating the white supremacists who had been after him since 1937 (Hoover advised lifting his passport as early as 1941) was the right thing to do if there was to be, as he hoped, a resurgence of popularity for socialism and reform in the USSR. To condemn him follows the line of calling Mandela "terrorist" under Apartheid. It suites white supremacist capitalism to make the USSR under Stalin's the "crime of crimes." It's all they have left now that world is so much smaller and Communism turned out to not be the "sole enemy of humanity" after all.

For most folks of color and black folks I know or have ever discussed this with, the fact that he was a communist sympathizer is irrelevant. The US dropped an atomic bomb, made friends with Nazi's that served this governments interests, helped and aided terror on the part of South American dictatarships, murdered thousands in Vietnam, constructively engaged apartheid, cooperated with some of the most brutal dictatorships the world has known and now the government kidnaps folks and holds people in concentration camp called Guantanamo Bay, has killed tens and thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Tzouliadis seeks, via self-righteousness, to negate an American who fought for the rights of a group of Americans who were suffering from second class citizenship. During a time when the Communists at least acknowledged the evil of Jim Crow America when anti-Communists would not (they lived for Jim Crow). Robeson spoke up for a people so beaten down that they barely spoke up for themselves. Unless Paul Robeson embraced the system that rejected him, then it is only proper that he should be labeled an outcast in "collusion with Stalin".

The US and Western Europe was towards people of color. That they match Stalin, one of histories biggest mass murderers. Taking resources and committing ethnic cleansing while blaming "Eugenics" and later "Communism." King Leopold=Stalin. The CIA and Nixon=Stalin.

Once again an ultra right wing scholar like Tzouliadis uses the inexcusable crimes of Stalin to rationalize the crimes against humanity committed by Western Europe and the United States during the past centuries. It is not possible for him to have an encompassing world view that actually looks at WHY many went to the USSR. Nor does he ask why many, disgusted and oppressed by Confederate style leadership in the states wanted to try another system. He conveniently leaves this out or approaches it with such white man's burden foulness because it does not fit in with with the low class, right wing catholic narrative of shaming those who were searching for new ways of life when the concept of Marxism transformed the hopes for millions around the world who were being unspeakably exploited.

Manipulative, asinine narrative writing that shows no extensive research in the former USSR not even a remote mastering of the Russian language (kind of important for studying the former Soviet Union...) this shill calls himself a "historian" and has so many mistakes and falsely sourced information that it is just inexcusable that this was ever published. eg: Paul Robeson's family should sue for libel over the fake and bogus facts surroundings Robeson's affiliations with the U.S.S.R. as well as the lies about how he spent the last years of his life. The baseball catcher reference was false and just disgustingly rote; a BNP style anti-Communist Hallmark card.

Blacks were denied the free world, human rights, voting rights, civil rights during Jim Crow. There was not even the semblance of the Free world for Blacks. Tzouliadis lies and claims Paul Robeson was in "partnership" with the USSR and colluding and conspiring together secretly. Advocating Communism is not the same as working for the USSR and implying someone was a spy. If he applies "collusion" to Robeson in that logic, then Tzouliadis must also apply it to himself. The Europeans made mass murder and rape of African/Asian resources a celebrated art form and have never apologized for it. He lives off a system that is still exploiting and killing. Stalin's regime was also not exposed publicly until the late 50's, they were going after Robeson as early as 1937. He was supposed to then side with the lynchers and the white supremacists in the government like Dies, Bilbo and Rankin? Some of whom were proud KKK members at one time? Why?

Paul Robeson was a VISITOR in the USSR under Stalin never an active politican, resident nor a CP member-ANYWHERE. The only source that has EVER come to light of PR being aware of purges has come from his son who has given varying accounts over 30 years after the supposed fact. There are other sources which both corroborate and deny, PR Jr's account. If he was aware, which he surely was, that still does not make him a "Stalinist" it just makes him very untrustworthy of the white American power structure. Wow. What a shock. Robeson saw GRADATIONS in that system just as every single person in Israel does NOT want to occupy and eradicate the Palestinians, many advocates of the USSR were hoping that reforms would take place. Robeson never apologized because he owed the US powers structured nothing. Robeson also justified his silence on the grounds that any public criticism of the USSR would reinforce the authority of anti-Soviet elements in the United States which, he believed, wanted a preemptive war against the Soviet Union which has now been proven.

Criticism of the Soviet Union by someone of Robeson's immense international popularity would only serve to shore up reactionary elements in the U.S., the same elements that had lifted his passport, blocked anti-lynching legislation, and maintained a racial climate in the United States that also allowed Jim Crow genocide, impoverished living conditions for all races and a white supremacist domination of the US government to continue.Robeson is on record many times as stating that he felt the existence of a major socialist power like the USSR was a bulwark against Western European capitalist domination of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. And it was.

To view all of the decisions made by fellow travelers and even many CP members with 21st century hindsight is just demonstrating low intelligence. Richard Burton stayed with Marshal Tito many times and praised him to journalists, that does not make him a Titoist. Tito killed many people too. Writing a tribute to one of our recent Presidents when he dies does not make one a killer of children in Iraq. LBJ, Nixon, Reagan Clinton, the Bushes, Obama have also collectively caused the deaths of millions. The deaths incurred by imperialism and the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, Congolese, etc etc surpasses Stalin. But once again, apologists like Tzouliadis do not care because the "higher body count of Stalin" is the brass ring conceit with which this author depends on to prove his tired Truman era point-that Communism is the enemy of mankind.

They say in defense of white supremacy in the US and Western Europe in juxtaposition with the USSR: "No U.S. president has organized a system of labour camps operated under the principle "death by labour", no U.S. president has willfully starved a country, no show trials, no assassinations of exiled rivals by sending fake lovers."

Opening fire on BONUS marchers? Mai Lai? Vietnam? Chile? Nicaragua? Indonesia, Guatemala, mass murder by US soldiers in the Philippines with executive approval, Operation Ajax? Iraq? Pumping how many MILLIONS in Apartheid in South Africa , for how long? A WHITE supremacist regime with one of the most grotesque human rights records of all time? A post-regime of systemic hatred between races that now has whites as well as blacks suffering and living in fear? That's the "free world"?

Tzouliadis, don't write a check with dismal history that your butt can't cash. This book blowsback.