In the Nightmare "The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia"

National Review magazine ^ | Sept. 29, '08 | Ronald Radosh

[T.L.Sink]

We know that history holds many surprises. One doesn't expect to learn more about the secret history of of the Gulag than we already know from both Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Acrcipelago" and Anne Applebaum's "Gulag: A history." This feat, however, is exactly what author Tim Tzouliadis has accomplished: the previously unknown story of the thousands of Americans who, during the Depression, sought employment and a better future in the "worker's paradise" built by the Bolsheviks. All kinds of Americans joined the exodus. Some of them were Communists or fellow-travelors but the majority were average Americans - skilled workers promised paid passage, jobs at high pay, paid vacations, and free medical care. Some were blacks fleeing the segregationist South.

[T.L.Sink]

What's utterly astounding is how ALL elements in our society were either duped or indifferent. Many victims were dragged off to death or slavery by the NKVD in the new Soviet-built Ford Model A cars. The ultimate capitalist, Henry Ford, had signed his contract in Dearborn, providing the NKVD's entire fleet. The long list of apologist's for Stalin's terror - who denied its very existence - included the Vice President of the United States and a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter. America's wartime policy did more than just prettify Stalin. Lend-Lease aid was used to supply and repair Liberty ships sent to the Soviet Union for wartime use - supposedly against the Nazis. Fully HALF of them, we learn, were used to send new slave laborers to the arctic Kolyma camp. "NKVD steamers," the author calls them, "were reconditioned at the expense of American taxpayers, before their quick return to service as the "death ships" of the Sea of Okhotsk." [Much more to the review AND the book. Penguin 488 pp. $29.95]

[21twelve]

“...but the majority were average Americans - skilled workers promised paid passage, jobs at high pay, paid vacations, and free medical care.”

How timely.

[thatdewd]

BTTT!

[nkycincinnatikid]

Now wait a minute here, when did Henry Ford beconme a Communist? Wasn’t he a Nazi in the last episode?

[piasa]

history ping

[wgflyer]

If one didn’t already know, one might wonder why liberals are so hesitant to allow history to be taught in school......so much to learn!

Great post.

[JoeFromSidney]

Now wait a minute here, when did Henry Ford beconme a Communist? Wasn’t he a Nazi in the last episode?

I suspect Henry Ford took the opportunity to get rid of a bunch of radical leftists, including Victor Reuther.

[AnalogReigns]

“...but the majority were average Americans - skilled workers promised paid passage, jobs at high pay, paid vacations, and free medical care.”

I'm sorry, but Lenin and his minions were godless brutes from the very beginning--and Tzarist Russia before that, was also a tyranny.

Any American who knew anything at all about Russia, even before Stalin, would have been a fool to go there from the USA, Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and all.

[Jabba the Nutt]

Before the Obamabot, there was the Stalinbot. Some actually survived.

[Savage Beast]

Davies and his comrades would be very much at home in the Democrat Party of the 21st century.

[Lorianne]

Wow. Thanks for posting. Americans are so uneducated about these things. Never taught in schools to this day.

[AmericanVictory]

You are exactly right, sir!

[T.L.Sink]

Henry Ford was never a Communist but a capitalist who was so eager to earn a buck that he didn’t care how he got it, or from whom it came, or at what cost. He actually had a goon squad that was trained to beat up any workers who tried to unionize. He was also an anti-Semite, thrown in for good measure.

[T.L.Sink]

Thanks, and you make a good point about the teaching of history.

[T.L.Sink]

We all know what you say about Lenin and Stalin is true now. As the old saying goes, “hindsight is 20/20.” But the fact is that in those days some DIDN’T know all the horrors and terrors that were taking place in the Soviet Union. It was a very tightly closed society. It’s not that all the American workers were stupid but that in their economic desperation and desire to survive they fell for the Soviet propaganda. We can’t blame them for not knowing what they couldn’t have known at the time - which was that they’d all end up dead or in the Gulag (which also was a kind of death sentence).

[T.L.Sink]

Damn right!

[tet68]

Get a copy of “The Alexander Dolgun Story”.

Mr. Dolgun was the son of an american engineer who went to work in Russia in the 1930s. He was employed part time at the US embassy. On his way to work he was arrested by the organs and interrogated, he was sentenced under article 58 and served 14 years in the gulag. Finally released under the Khrushchev amnesty he was reunited with his american sister and finally managed to emigrate to the west.

Another view of the soviet system.

[T.L.Sink]

Thanks, and I think you’re right about our public education system. Personally, I think FR is a great forum where we all learn (and challenge) each other. I know I’ve learned more than I’ve contributed and it’s a very stimulating venue - which is essential to learning.

[T.L.Sink]

Thanks very much for that recommendation and I’ll try to get it. By the way, “Article 58” is something (as I’m sure you know) that Solzenitsyn made internationally notorious. When I was in graduate school my area of concentration was Soviet Studies and I have a large library in that area. But that book is one I don’t have and I’m already anxious to read it and add it to my collection. I admit I’m addicted to that area of study and the learning never ends! Maybe I’m an idiot savant - but I don’t care and I enjoy it. Regards,

[21twelve]

Reading up a bit on the Depression from Peter Jennings’ “The Century”:

Roosevelt provided a sense of supreme confidence. He had no remedy, perhaps, but...he did have energy - a bouyant audacious spirit...

A letter he received said “People are looking to you almost as they look to God”...

No less a Republican than Gov. Landon of Kansas pronounced that “even the iron hand of a national dictator is in preference to a paralytic stroke”, while Senator David Reed went one step further - “If this country ever need a Mussolini, it is now”....

On the day he was inaugurated, Roosevelt closed every bank in the country. He would decide which banks deserved federal support and which would have to go under. It was the day the money stopped; literally, you had to cadge a meal, live on the tap in places that knew you, pay with a check for a cab ride and once - I remember- for a shoeshine.

Roosevelt’s advisors worked long hours to come up with a rescue bill that propped up banks with federal loans. It was rushed through the House (with cries of “Vote! Vote!” and on to the Senate where it was passed.

And from Alistair Cooke’s “America”:

On the day he was inaugurated, Roosevelt closed every bank in the country. He would decide which banks deserved federal support and which would have to go under. It was the day the money stopped; literally, you had to cadge a meal, live on the tap in places that knew you, pay with a check for a cab ride and once - I remember- for a shoeshine.

Cooke also writes about the NRA (National Recovery Administration) which for two years fixed the prices and wages of everything from “steelworkers to burlesque strippers”.