The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia (60 page)

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Authors: Tim Tzouliadis

BOOK: The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia
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My thanks to Adam Wishart for his crucial wisdom at the beginning, and to my literary agent, Patrick Walsh, who took on this project with an enduring faith and enthusiasm.
I would like to thank Dr. Lyuba Vinogradova and Dr. Dimitri Konyushkov for their invaluable work with the Russian interviews, research, and archival translations in Moscow. And to thank and credit the work of my American and British editors who showed such care, patience, and critical engagement with this book: Vanessa Mobley, Scott Moyers, and Richard Beswick.
Finally, my thanks in the simplest way to my family—to my mother and three sisters and especially to my father, Dr. V. Tzouliadis, for teaching me the value of politics and history.
NOTES
1 . THE JOADS OF RUSSIA
1
Photo from the collection of Thomas Sgovio, courtesy of Joanne Sgovio, published in article by Alan Cullinson, “A Secret Revealed: Stalin’s Police Killed Americans,” Associated Press, Nov. 23, 1997.
2
New York Times,
Nov. 17, 1931; quoted in “American Jobless Begin National March to Washington,”
Moscow News,
Dec. 8, 1931.
3
United News,
vol. 2, Reel 86; vol. 7, Reel 332; vol. 8, Reel 480, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland; Frank Tannenbaum, “The Prospect of Violent Revolution in the United States,”
Scribner’s Magazine,
May 1931.
4
Irving Howe and Lewis Coser,
The American Communist Party: A Critical History, 1919-1957
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 192.
5
Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952). From Roosevelt’s inaugural address, March 4, 1933.
6
Peter G. Filene,
Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 1917-1933
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 255.
7
Mikhail Ilin,
New Russia’s Primer: The Story of the Five-Year Plan,
trans. George S. Counts and Nucia P. Lodge (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), 148-60.
8
Andrew Smith,
I Was a Soviet Worker
(London: Robert Hale, 1937), 24.
9
“6,000 Artisans Going to Russia Glad to Take Wages in Roubles,”
Business Week,
Sept. 2, 1931, 36-37.
10
“A Soviet Call for Yankee Skill,”
The Literary Digest,
Sept. 19, 1931;
Business Week,
Oct. 7, 1931.
11
“Russia Will Curb Job-Seekers’ Entry,”
New York Times,
Mar. 18, 1932; “Too Many Americans Are Going to Russia,”
New York Times,
April 17, 1932; “American Immigrants in Russia,” Ruth Kennell and Milly Bennett,
American Mercury,
April 1932, 463-72.
12
361.11 Employees/315, RG 59, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
13
861.5511/9, RG 59, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
14
Walter Duranty, “Moscow Expects Immigration Soon,”
New York Times,
Feb. 4, 1931.
15
Albert Parry, “A Gold Rush to Moscow,”
Outlook,
July 15, 1931, 331.
16
Ibid., 338.
17
Boris Pilnyak, “Moscow the Magnet,”
Sovietland,
issue 2, 1935, Moscow.
18
Elbridge Durbrow, Oct. 6, 1934, Enclosure No. 1 to dispatch No. 156, RG 59, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
19
Radio broadcast, Oct. 11, 1931, quoted from George Bernard Shaw,
A Little Talk on America
(London: Friends of the Soviet Union, 1932).
 
2. BASEBALL IN GORKY PARK
1
Wedding is a suburb of Berlin—from
Za Industrializatsiu
, Enclosure 3, to despatch 8389, Riga, Latvia, Jan. 13, 1932, RG59, National Achives II, College Park, Maryland.
2
“Reds Draft Many from US Trades,”
Washington Post,
Nov. 1, 1931.
3
“American Immigrants in Russia,” Ruth Kennell and Milly Bennett,
American Mercury,
April 1932, 463-72.
4
Letter from Anna Louise Strong to Eleanor Roosevelt, Jan. 29, 1935, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, 1933- 1945, Library of Congress Manuscripts, Washington, D.C.
5
“From a Professor’s Diary,”
Moscow News,
Oct. 12, 1931; “It Feels Good to Arrive in USSR Says American Workers,”
Moscow News,
Oct. 17, 1931.
6
“Admit Us to USSR,”
Moscow News,
Jan. 12, 1932.
7
Walter Duranty, “Immigration Now an Issue in Soviet,”
New York Times,
March 14, 1932, 8.
8
Eugene Lyons,
Assignment in Utopia: On the Experiences of a American Journalist in the USSR
(London: Harrap, 1938), 88.
9
“Hundreds at ‘Moscow News’ Birthday Party,”
Moscow News,
Oct. 26, 1931.
10
“A Visit to Schools,”
Moscow Pioneer,
no. 3, March 1932, 4; Dispatch no. 286, Riga, April 22, 1932, RG 59, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland; “Epic of Working Class Strength,”
Moscow News,
Nov. 11, 1931.
11
“How We Marched,”
Moscow News,
May 6, 1932.
12
“Russian Athletes Want Baseball,”
Moscow Daily News,
May 14, 1932; “Baseball for USSR,”
Moscow Daily News,
1932; “Russian Team Keen for Baseball—Put Up Good Game,”
Moscow Daily News,
July 3, 1932.
13
“Americans Bring Baseball to the Soviet Union,”
Moscow News,
May 20, 1932; “Baseball Is Spreading,”
Moscow Daily News,
June 5, 1932; Robert Edelman,
Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sports in the USSR
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 73; “Stalin Auto Plant Workers Take to Baseball,”
Moscow Daily News,
June 24, 1934.
14
“Anglo-American School Challenges Leningrad Pupils,”
Moscow Daily News,
Nov. 20, 1932; “English School Moves,”
Moscow News,
Nov. 22, 1931; “Public Schools Here, Abroad,”
Moscow News,
Feb. 27, 1932.
15
James E. Abbe,
I Photograph Russia
(London: Harrap, 1935), 272; MID 2070, Oct. 23, 1929, RG 165, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
16
Elizabeth Hampel,
Yankee Bride in Moscow
(New York: Liveright, 1941), 301.
17
“What Do English Speaking Children Here Read?”
Moscow Daily News,
July 8, 1934.
18
861.01/A19, RG 59, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland; Vladimir Zazubrin, “The Chip: A Story About a Chip and About Her,” trans. Graham Roberts, from Oleg Chukhontsev (ed.),
Dissonant Voices: The New Russian Fiction
(London: Harvill, 1991), 7.
19
“Anglo-American School Pupils Hold Own Court,”
Moscow Daily News,
Jan. 29, 1933.
20
“It’s Such a Contrast to Boston,”
Moscow Daily News,
Nov. 6, 1934.
21
“Moscow Baseball Team Beats Visiting Gorki Nine by 16 to 5,”
Moscow Daily News,
June 8, 1934; “Short-comings of Moscow-Gorki Baseball Game,”
Moscow Daily News,
June 10, 1934; “Baseball Asks for a Helping Hand,”
Moscow Daily News,
1934; “Moscow, Gorki Players, Physical Culture Head Discuss Baseball,”
Moscow Daily News,
June 9, 1934.
22
“Karelia Foreign Youth Club Wants to Get into Inter-City Baseball,”
Moscow Daily News,
May 12, 1934; “Baseball Grows in Karelia,”
Moscow Daily News,
circa June 24, 1934; “Suggests Baseball Spartakiade for Players Here,”
Moscow Daily News,
Aug. 14, 1934.
23
“Moscow Baseball Team Leaves for Intercity Series in Karelia,”
Moscow Daily News,
July 16, 1934; Mayme Sevander,
Red Exodus: Finnish American Emigration to Russia
(Duluth, Minn.: Oscat, 1993), 168; “Moscow Team Drops Second Game in North,”
Moscow Daily News,
July 21, 1934; “Moscow Baseball Team’s Faults, Misfortunes,”
Moscow Daily News,
August 4, 1934; “Missing Ball Players Found Gathering the Harvest,”
Moscow Daily News,
Aug. 1934.
24
“Baseball Comes to the USSR to Stay,”
Moscow Daily News,
Sept. 1934; “Moscow Baseball Team Thanks Supporters as Season Ends,”
Moscow Daily News,
1934; “The Hot Dog Makes Its Bow,”
Moscow Daily News,
Dec. 1934.
25
“Baseball and Soccer at Dynamo,”
Moscow Daily News,
July 24, 1932.
26
Jerzy Gliksman,
Tell the West
(New York: National Committee for a Free Europe, 1948), 9.
27
“Foreign Workers to Stage Baseball Game at OGPU Labor Commune,”
Moscow Daily News,
June 17, 1934; “Teams Line Up for Baseball Tournament,”
Moscow Daily News,
Feb. 21, 1935.
 
3. “LIFE HAS BECOME MORE JOY FUL!”
1
Harold Denny, “End of OGPU Hailed as Defeat of Foes,”
New York Times,
July 12, 1934.
2
“Record Attendance at Foreign Baseball Practice,”
Moscow Daily News,
April 26, 1935.
3
Paul Robeson, “I Breathe Freely,” interview in Moscow by Julia Dorn,
New Theatre,
July 1935, 5; from Paul Robeson,
Paul Robeson Speaks
, ed. Philip S. Foner (London: Quartet, 1978), 102.
4
Paul Robeson, Jr.,
The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An Artist’s Journey, 1898-1939
(New York: John Wiley, 2001), 280.
5
“Warm Welcome for Robeson at Foreign Workers’ Club,”
Moscow Daily News,
Jan. 2, 1935.
6
“I Am Home—Interview by Vern Smith,”
Daily Worker,
Jan. 15, 1935, from Robeson,
Paul Robeson Speaks,
95.
7
Thomas Sgovio,
Dear America
(Kenmore, N.Y.: Partners’ Press, 1979), 106.
8
Ibid., 103.
9
Encl. no. 3, to dispatch no. 1133 of the Legation at Riga, Latvia, Feb. 8, 1933, RG 59, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
10
Irena Wiley,
Around the Globe in Twenty Years
(New York: McKay, 1962), 6.
11
Archibald Forman,
From Baltic to Black Sea
(London: Sampson Low, 1933), 86.
12
Thomas Sgovio interview with George Kovacs, tapes courtesy of David Elkind, LiveWire Media, San Francisco.
13
361.11, Employees/179, RG 59, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
14
Moscow Daily News,
Aug. 2, 1934.
15
Eugene Lyons,
Assignment in Utopia
(London: Harrap, 1938), 421.
16
“Anglo-American Chorus to Give Concert, Jan. 6,”
Moscow Daily News,
Dec. 28, 1935.
17
“English Chorus Invited to Sing April 14,”
Moscow Daily News,
April 5, 1935.
18
Sgovio,
Dear America,
112.
19
Ibid., 29; Alan Cullinson, “A Secret Revealed: Stalin’s Police Killed Americans,” Associated Press, Nov. 23, 1997.
20
Walter Duranty, “Million Are Held in Russian Camps, 200,000 in Forests,”
New York Times,
Feb. 3, 1931.
21
Diane P. Koenker and Ronald D. Bachman (eds.),
Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English Translation
(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1997), 156.
22
Lyons,
Assignment in Utopia,
58.
23
Sgovio,
Dear America,
7-8.
24
Boris Agapov, “Abundance,”
Sovietland,
April 1936, Moscow.
25
Sgovio,
Dear America,
7-8.
26
Margaret Wettlin,
Fifty Russian Winters: An American Woman’s Life in the Soviet Union
(New York: Pharos, 1992), 102.
27
Sheila Fitzpatrick,
Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 90.
28
Sgovio,
Dear America,
119.
 
4 . “FORDIZATSIA”
1
Alexander Blok, “Retribution,” foreword, quoted from
Selected Poems,
trans. Alex Miller (Moscow: Progress, 1981), 264.
2
Dispatch no. 286, Riga, April 22, 1932, RG 59, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
3
“Baseball Progresses Slowly But Surely at Kharkov Plant,”
Moscow Daily News,
July 3, 1934.
4
Charles E. Sorensen,
My Forty Years with Ford
(New York: Norton, 1936), 182; Peter G. Filene,
Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 1917-1933
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 117.
5
“Henry Ford Conquers Russia,”
The Outlook,
June 29, 1927.
6
Filene,
Americans and the Soviet Experiment,
124.
7
Carol Gelderman,
Henry Ford: Wayward Capitalist
(New York: Dial Press, 1981), 270-71.
8
Harry Bennett,
We Never Called Him Henry
(New York: Fawcett, 1951), 32.
9
Sorensen,
My Forty Years with Ford,
145; Gelderman,
Henry Ford: Wayward Capitalist,
53.
10
B. H. Berghoff, Report of the Ford Delegation to Russia and the USSR, April-Aug. 1926, Acc. 49, Box 1A, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, Mich.
11
Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, Moscow, RGASPI, fond 17, opis 166, delo 296, list 5.
12
Sorensen,
My Forty Years with Ford,
183.
13
Walter Duranty, “Talk of Ford Favor Thrills Moscow,”
New York Times,
Feb. 17, 1928.
14
Contract, May 31, 1929, Acc. 19, Box 1, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, Mich.
15
Robert Scoon, “Those Communist Model A’s,”
The Restorer
14, no. 6 (March-April 1970); Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, Mich.
16
Sorensen,
My Forty Years with Ford,
185-87.
17
Charles Sorensen, Oral History, Amtorg 1953, Acc. 65, Box 66, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, Mich.
18
Victor Herman,
Coming Out of the Ice: An Unexpected Life
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 10-17.
19
Acc. 818, Box 1, Folder 1 of 4, Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, Mich.
20
Herman,
Coming Out of the Ice,
27.
21
Eugene Lyons,
Assignment in Utopia
(London: Harrap, 1938), 351.
22
Kurt Schultz, “Building the Soviet Detroit: The Construction of the Nizhnii-Novgorod Automobile Factory, 1927-1932,”
Slavic Review
(Spring 1990).
23
Robert Scoon, “More About Those Communist Model A’s,”
The Restorer
15, no. 6 (March-April 1971), Benson Ford Research Center, Dearborn, Michigan.
24
Ellery Walter,
Russia’s Decisive Year
(London: Hutchinson, 1932), 143; “Collective Feeding Is Death Blow to Kitchen Drudgery,”
Moscow Daily News,
May 9, 1932.
25
Susan Buck-Morss,
Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 166.
26
Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn, Nov. 1, 1931, RGAE, f. 7620, op. 1, D.75, 1.8906. From list compiled by Prof. Boris Shpotov, Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
27
Ruth Kennell and Milly Bennett, “American Immigrants in Russia,”
American Mercury,
April 1932; “In the Fatherland of the Proletarians of All Countries,”
Za Industrializatsiu,
Nov. 7, 1931; Enclosure 3, to dispatch 8389, Riga, Latvia, Jan. 13, 1932, RG 59, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
28
Herman,
Coming Out of the Ice,
38.

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