The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia | Tim Tzouliadis

The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia | Tim Tzouliadis | Russia's Dirty Huge Secret

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The Forsaken: An A...

	The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia Tim Tzouliadis Penguin Press HC, The, 2008 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A remarkable piece of forgotten history?the story of how thousands of Americans were lured to Soviet Russia by the promise of jobs and better lives only to meet a tragic, and until now forgotten, end

The Forsaken starts with a photograph of a baseball team. The year is 1934, the image black and white: two rows of young men, one standing, the other crouching with their arms around one another?s shoulders. They are all somewhere in their late teens or twenties, in the peak of health. We know most, if not all, of their names: Arthur Abolin, Walter Preeden, Victor Herman, Eugene Peterson. They hail from ordinary working families from across America?Detroit, Boston, New York, San Francisco. Waiting in the sunshine, they look just like any other baseball team except, perhaps, for the Russian lettering on their uniforms.

These men and thousands of others, their wives, and children were possibly the least heralded migration in American history. Not surprising, maybe, since in a nation of immigrants few care to remember the ones who leave behind the dream. The exiles came from all walks of life. Within their ranks were Communists, trade unionists, and radicals of the John Reed school, but most were just ordinary citizens not overly concerned were politics. What united them was the hope that drives all emigrants: the search for a better life. And to any one of the millions of unemployed Americans during the Great Depression, even the harshest Moscow winter could sustain that promise.

Within four years of that June day in Gorky Park, many of the young men in that photograph will be arrested and along with them unaccounted numbers of their fellow countrymen. As foreign victims of Stalin?s Terror, some will be executed immediately in basement cells or at execution grounds outside the main cities. Others will be sent to the ?corrective labor? camps, where they will be starved and worked to death, their bodies buried in the snowy wasteland. Two of the baseball players who survive and whose stories frame this remarkable work of history will be inordinately lucky. This book is the story of these mens? lives?The Forsaken who lived and those who died.

The result of years of groundbreaking research in American and Russian archives, The Forsaken is also the story of the world inside Russia at the time of Terror: the glittering obliviousness of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, the duplicity of the Soviet government in its dealings with Roosevelt, and the terrible finality of the Gulag system. In the tradition of the finest history chronicling genocide in the twentieth century, The Forsaken offers new understanding of timeless questions of guilt and innocence that continue to plague us today.

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Truly a gripping book

In the early 1930s, as the Great Depression squeezed the United States in its iron grip, a group of Americans who had seen the propaganda about the "workers' paradise" being built in the Soviet Union, traveled over to find a little piece of paradise for themselves. Almost immediately things began to go wrong - many found their passports stolen by Russian officials, or conveniently "lost." With courage and boundless optimism they began to work in this strange new land, even forming their own baseball teams. But, within four years their "paradise" turned into hell on earth, as the Soviet secret police began to arrest and murder civilians by the thousands. Their American citizenship did not protect them, it made them targets - and when all was said and done very few made it out alive!

This is truly a gripping book. The author does an excellent job of telling the story of the Soviet terror, which resulted in the deaths of so many innocent people, and of telling the story of the Americans who were helplessly caught up in it. I could not tear myself away, turning pages deep into the night, as I watched the horror blossom in front of me, bearing its heartbreaking, heartrending fruit.

This book is a searing indictment of communism, but it is also an indictment of the American government, which took absolutely no action to protect or aid the Americans who they knew were about to be brutalized and murdered. The depth of the Roosevelt administration's complicity is appalling, with the American ambassador even attending show trials and admiring Josef Stalin. The American press was well aware of just what was happening, but they took such small steps (if at all) to inform the public of just what really was happening.

Yeah, as you can tell, this is a very moving book. The author really draws you into the tragedy, and the lives of the people caught up in it. This book should be on everyone's reading list for 2008 - it is a book that should be read by generations to come. I give this book my highest recommendations.

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Russia's Dirty Huge Secret

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.

Highly readable, 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. People were executed, tortured and imprisoned in forced work camps (the Gulag system): 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.

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A BRIALLIANT TALE OF A FORGOTTEN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

The Great Depression of the Twenties and the Thirties in the United Stated caused thousands of Americans to migrate to Russia.There they hoped their lot would be improved and saved.They came from many walks of life. However, in a very short period of time, not only would their lives change for the better;they would be sent to the Russian horror Gulags as a result of Stalin's decision to send there tens of millions.No one would be spared- not even those American citizens who honestly believed that Communism was the remedy to all their (financial) troubles.Many of them ended up as slaves in the gold mines of Kolyma.Others were executed or sent to corrective labour camps.After the demise of the Cold War did the truth of this forgotten episode of American history come out.
Tim Tzouliadis has written a masterfully- researched book. It is an original topic freshly investigated and was written by a great storyteller and historian.Basing his extensive research on American and definitely Russian archives,Tim shows the reader the extreme way American leaders and other well- known figures were duped by the Russian dictatorship of Stalin into thinking that Russia was some kind of paradise on earth, while the opposite happened.People like the singer Paul Robeson or the American Vice-President Wallace were convinced and seduced to believe the lies strewn along Russia in those horrible years.The true tragedy of those forsaken Americans was that nobody wanted to believe them or their stories or families ,while the American politicians and leaders did not care at all about them.The explanation for this behaviour seemed plausible:Stalin as an Ally of the West could not be bothered by such trifle things.The American embassy's obliviousness and the manipulations and machinations of the Stalin regime were other elements which helped magnify this tragedy.The State Department's indifference was appaling as well.
Some of these men and women escaped from the Soviet Union and managed to return to their homeland telling the author their horrible ordeal.They were baseball players and their physical fitness helped them survive and tell the rest of the world about their unbelievable tragedy.They have also depicted the monstrosities of a regime gone mad and totally paranoid which did not at all care whether thirty million Russians were expelled to the infamous Gulags.
This book should be a warning to those who tend to forget or want to make others forget.Collective amnesia-sometimes practiced by some politicians or statesmen- is the first sign of a country (or leadership) that does not care about its citizens.And it does not show any moral scruples.This is the main idea behind this wonderfully-written (and forgotten historical) episode.You will enjoy and treasure each page of it!!!

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Filling in the Gaps in the Gulag history

This book reflects a great amount of scholarship on the part of Mr Tzouliadis, he has done a remarkable job of research here to add to what is already known about the grim story of the gulags. This book is well written and engaging but it also is a fairly thorough survey of the literature on this general topic. I have discovered several good first hand sources that I did not realize existed.

This book also sheds a good amount of light on the question of why the conditions in Russia were so little known in the 1930s. Basically, once a person was inside Russia, censorship of their communication was full and these people had their passports confiscated by the Russian government so it was almost impossible to leave. The Russian government claimed that these American citizens had renounced their citizenships, resulting in the fact that the American state department was not able or very willing to help these poor people.

In addition it appears that the treaties with Russia establishing diplomatic relations were not thoroughly drafted with safeguards for the protection of American citizens in Russia. The Soviets exploited these loopholes extensively.

Mr Tzouliadis sketches in a number of missing pieces in the dynamics here. The Russian foreign ministry was deathly afraid of the NKVD, and so inquiries to the Russian foreign ministry were fruitless. The problem of helping these people could only have been addressed by the highest level of interaction meaning FDR to Stalin. However, unfortuanately one of FDR's key sources was Walter Duranty, one of the most famous newspaper reporters of his time and unfortuantely it appears that Mr Duranty was a very serious apoligist for Stalin at the very least, and quite possibly was an agent of the NKVD as some defectors have alleged. (the existence of these defectors was unknown to me) Hence, several of FDR's sources with respect the the reality inside the Soviet union were compromised. It also appears that bureaucratic lethargy played a role.

Mr Tzouliadis also sheds much light on the question of MIA's possibly being left behind in Asia. From reading this account it becomes pretty clear that American prisoners of war from World war two and Korea have been spirited into the Gulags. The reasons why this was desirable are not clear and Mr Tzouliadis does not engage in any wild speculation. It also becomes fairly clear that the Americans were far from alone in being pulled into the camps, it appears that many nationalities were present in the camps. It also appears that some other nations were perhaps more diligent in pursuing the release of their citizens.

In summary this is a sad tale, but one which fills in some important gaps in the overall story of the camps. It also clarifies why the reality of what was going on inside Russia in the 1930s was simply not known widely and unfortuantely this did lead to a good number of American emigres suffering horrendously and being trapped inside the abyss. I found some of the discussion of the state department behavior and Mr Duranty's writings and influence very interesting. The fact that nobody could get back out of Russia and that several of the most important information channels were tainted goes a long way to explaining why a better understanding of the realities of the Soviet Union under Stalin took so long to come to pass.

This is an excellent and very impressive book and it deserves a wide readership.

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Lest They Be Forgotten

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.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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