The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia

Most American are completely unaware that during the pre-War Depression Era Stalin was able to draw thousands of Americans to emigrate to Russia. Most were desperate blue collar folks, let down hard by the American economy at its lowest. Many were radicals and progressives, but others just wanted a good lifestyle for their families. Stalin advertised guaranteed employment, at higher wages, free of prejudice, and all part of glorious experiment in equality. The American press and many intellectuals promoted this vision, they themselves being utterly infatuated by the Communist hope in general and the Russian experiment in particular. For example, Walter Duranty was NY Times Moscow Bureau Chief for 14 years. He won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Russia in 1932. During most of that time he would frequently just reword Stalin's propaganda stories as news for American public under the banner of its most respected institution. He saw the vicious intentional starvation of millions of Ukrainian Soviet people and chose to report they were wildly exaggerated. He downplayed the Stalinist purge of millions, and where undeniable, apologized for them. He said Stalin's strong hand was needed because Russia was essentially an "Asiatic" culture, and it was European bias that stood against dictatorship propped up by violence when needed. Duranty had a key roll in shaping FDR's policies toward Stalin. In the end, Stalin murdered twice as many of his own civilians as even Hitler, with the tacid support or intentional blindness of the mainstream American Left. These American immigrants to Russia became innocent pawns in all this. They were used for propaganda, some were set in fake showcase communities for naive and corrupt American press to dutifully report on back home. They set up baseball teams. Their kids were to Soviet school. But in the end the conditions of all were far worse than back home, even in the Depression. Most were not allowed to leave. Many ended up in gulags or executed. Countless thousands were joined by American POWs of WWII inherited from the Nazis by Stalin. Many of these were never turned back over to their American allies, but were kept as resources on American culture for Sovoet spy operations, or as slave workers. Decades later Boris Yeltsin revealed this in the early 90s, but the ex-Soviet bureaucrats remained reluctant to make things right. And in any case, nearly all were long dead or untraceable by then. This is one chapter in the incredibly vast and tragic story of Stalinist murder larger than even the Holocaust. It is rarely told. Maybe because it doesn't have the racial element of the Holocaust. Maybe because Stalin was not as flamboyant a figure as Hitler. Maybe because the American Left was so complicit in it all, and their descendants still dominate the mass media. Maybe because Stalin was a US ally in the War. Maybe because Russia was much more isolated from America than Germany and the news didn't leak out until the gulags were much smaller (they continued after 1956, but not on the same scale). In any case, I've read a good bit on the gulags and Stalin's Russia and never heard about the baseball teams and the large number of American victims. This book does a great job of uncovering this. A little long-winded and slow, but the author is a good story-teller and a careful historian.

As one who spent over 40 years studying and using the Russian language in military and defense areas, I really appreciate this book. My old Russian teachers who taught me the language over 50 years ago told me all about the Soviet Union whence their parents had escaped. After military service and then acquiring my undergraduate degree in Russian, I spent 6 months on a USIA (the old United States Information Agency) cultural exchange exhibit traveling around the USSR, after which I returned to the military institute where I had originally studied Russian and spent 30 years teaching the language to our military intelligence personnel. This book reveals the tragedy of the generation who, out of desperation during the Great Depression, grabbed what they thought was a safety line and traveled to what was being promoted as a "workers' paradise" in the 1930s, only to be swept up in the Great Purge and the Stalin Terror and be worked to death in the Soviet GULAG. It holds a valuable lesson for today's youth, many of whom are anxious to believe the siren song of socialism and accept it as the solution to all of society's problems. As the Russians say, "measure the cloth nine times before making the first cut." I only hope that young people can be encouraged to read this book and learn from history before they, too, might be caught up in the net and perish as did the generation described in the book.

Although there are many runners up, no one fits the description of a sociopath better than Joseph Stalin. The mind begins to reel when trying to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the numbers of people that were brutally and sadistically murdered by Stalin’s regime. Some of the first of those to be seized by this paranoid regime were dozens and dozens of expatriated Americans. “One is taken one is left”—and the one that was “taken” was thrown into the back of a van; brutally beaten, tortured, and ended up with a bullet to the back of the head, to be shoved into a mass grave along with dozens of others who had met the same ignominious fate. And if you were lucky enough (and I do mean lucky) to escape this fate, many of your friends, family, or neighbors weren’t so lucky. The number of priests alone who were killed by the Stalin’s Regime was a staggering 200,000. One of the main questions that emerges is was our State Department aware of what was going on? And the answer is an unequivocal yes. At the time the American Embassy was rife with those who sided with-and secretly supported--the aims, goals, methodology and ideology of the Soviet regime. Ever ready to sing paeans of praise to Stalin this cadre of communist sympathizers found a very comfortable and safe place within the American Diplomatic Corps in Moscow during the 1930’s. Perhaps, no one is more guilty of displaying a complete contempt and disregard for the sufferings of these poor expatriated Americans than the morally bankrupt US ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph Davies. Proud, affectatious, obsessed with image, Davies chose to look the other way as these expatriated Americans were being systematically murdered. Always ready to throw lavish parties on his yacht for the Soviet elite--replete with the most expensive champagne and caviar—Davies never missed an opportunity to extoll the virtues of Stalin. Next to Joseph Davies, no one did more to help foster and create a glowing image of Stalin than the American newspaper journalist Will Duranty; a name that now stands preeminent in the Journalists Hall of Shame. Just like Davies, Duranty knew full well what was taking place in Soviet Russia and, just like Davies, chose to look the other way. Neither man had the courage or the resolve to bring these atrocities to light. Both were guilty of sending back idyllic reports and communiques to Roosevelt and to the American press. Which explains (at least in part) why Roosevelt was particularly soft on Soviet Russia, at least in the beginning. Surely the men and woman who had to suffer and endure these tragic and horrific ordeals must have felt Forsaken, but thanks to Tim Tzouliadis’ book they will not forgotten.

A friend gave me this book to read a few years ago and I was stunned to learn what had taken place when Uncle Jo(Stalin) was our "great friend and ally." Thousands of American workers were willingly sent to help Russia build its manufacturing base. They ended up in the gulag, frozen and worked to death, only a handful ever to return. If you've ever been to Marjorie Meriweather Post's mansion in Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC, which is open to the public, you will see the results of her "collecting" Russian art, jewels and artifacts when she was the wife of Ambassador Joseph E. Davies in the period just before World War II, when Russia needed to raise money to arm itself. She had many millions at her disposal as the heiress to the Post cereals fortune. She paid pennies on the dollar (ruble?) for treasures she had shipped back to the States. These had been owned by wealthy aristocrats who were purged by the Communists and their property taken by the Communist state. What a story! I bought it this time as a present for my grown grandson, a student of history, who had never learned about this chapter in college. It occurred during the Depression and run-up to WWII, so it was a busy news time, but the author, Tim Tzouliadis, has uncovered a time and place that should never have been forgotten.

Contrary to the single 1-star review, this is not some anti-communist dialectic, it is subtitled "An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia." The reader's opinion of the FDR administration should be significantly diminished in reading about his ambassador to Moscow, Joseph Davies, who spent much of his time out side of Russia, or when there, personally lowered the value of the black-market dollar exchange rate by endless shopping excursions scooping up Russian art. Davies went on to become a major adviser of FDR for Russian relations during the war and at Postdam. My only complaint is the author describes Davies as a "liberal lawyer" when he was anything but liberal. He was a corporate lawyer interested in money and deals, with no concern whatever for human rights or the gross abuses of Stalin. The book criticizes the actions or inaction of many American individuals: Americans naive enough to risk their futures and lives in the Soviet Union in the Great Depression era, Henry Ford whose book "My Life and Work" was a bestseller in Russia and whose factory ethic was admired by Stalin and who also made millions selling automobiles and factories to Stalin (the UAW's Walter Reuther worked for a time in the Gorky Ford plant), capitalists who encouraged Franklin Roosevelt to recognize the new Soviet Union as it would be good for business, President Franklin Roosevelt ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph Davies, an incompetent political appointee who was rich, acquisitive of Russian art, naive of what was going on in Russia to the point where his behavior reminds one of the Queen's Court in Alice in Wonderland. Davies written reports from the National Archives referenced in the book include accounts of Davies attendance at Russian show trials and his belief in the guilt of all those quickly convicted and executed. The book also parcels out rebuke for FDR Vice-President Henry Wallace who was easily and completely duped by the Russian NKVD in admiring the Kolyma slave camps in a visit there in 1944, US Embassy employees and State Department officers who knew Americans in Russia were being arrested and eliminated as they stepped out of the embassy onto the streets but did nothing as it would not benefit their careers, US newsmen in Russia who were wined, dined, entertained (and censored) who failed to investigate or believe in the fatality rates of the Ukrainian famine of the early 30's, and famous Americans like Paul Robeson, who was confronted by his own son for not speaking out on the execution of people they had both known in Russia. Additionally, American mining experts helped open up the rich goldfields of the arctic Kolyma, while the FDR administration, aware that the Soviet gold was mined by virtual slaves, arranged to buy the Soviet gold on NYC markets and have it shipped to the US to the extent of tens of millions a month in order to control the price and supply of gold. US Lend-Lease shipments also fed the NKVD guards in Magadan while also supplying slave ships to send them north to the Kolyma. The incompetence, greed, negligence to know, care or seek to alleviate the atrocities being committed under Stalin, by parties almost too numerous to list in US industry, government and media are as shocking as the heinous Soviet state repression itself. Harry Truman, senator at the time, is one of the few who seemed to understand the folly of saving Stalin, when he spoke against Lend-Lease and said we should help the Germans if Russia was winning, or if the Germans were winning help the Russians, in order to let the two regimes destroy each other. On reflection, it is frankly no surprise that with a pro-Soviet ideology and advisers who were blinded to the realities of Stalinism, people like like Davies, and VP like Wallace, FDR handed over Eastern Europe to Stalin after the war. Men who cared little about reports of the crimes of Stalin, or for the lives of Americans trying to flee Stalin, would hardly flinch at putting millions of others behind his Iron Curtain.

Wow! One of the best books I have ever read. Seriously, a true gem. As a teacher, it should probably replace "Animal Farm," "The Diary of Anne Frank" or "Night" as the definitive required high school text regarding Marxist atrocities committed in the 20th century starting with Lenin's Bolshevik revolution to Hitler's Democratic Socialist Nazi Party to Stalin's USSR and Mao's China. Highly researched (from both declassified US and KGB files) and a gripping story of the lost American families seeking a better life in Stalin's USSR during the Great Depression, the book delves both into personal stories like American Victor Herman (once crowned the 'Lindbergh of Russia') and his trials through the Russian Gulag system along with documenting the total complicity of FDR, his Soviet Ambassadors and his Vice President Henry Wallace- a Russian apologist who was totally hoodwinked by the propaganda machine of the Soviet Machine (KGB), only later writing an apology in 1952. Wallace had wanted to believe so badly in Stalin's vision of democracy in the new Siberian frontier that he once compared the Gulag system akin to the pioneering spirit of the American frontier. After reading this book, you may demand a major rewrite of FDR's presidency in light of its absolute complicity towards the reign of terror that was occurring within the USSR despite intelligence reports from our own embassy and British intelligence. It truly is an immersive read into real historical events of Stalin's 1930-1940's Russian nightmare and the forgotten story of Americans who perished within. Long, live liberty!

This is a seriously, scholarly, book. It is dispassionately written, yet portrays stunningly evil acts committed both by communists in the Soviet Union, and Western European, and American, ideological sympathizers — and indifferent members of the political class. It's heart-breaking and terrifying because it reveals what is better known about Nazi Germany: how seemingly decent people can facilitate the a police state, torture, summary executions, terror, slave labor camps, rape, child abuse, deliberate mass starvation, etc. There are many, many named Americans — many whom the reader may be at least slightly acquainted with — who deserved their own Nuremberg trials. Hitler learned a great deal, and was inspired by what the Soviets did before him. This is also a most deserving condemnation of collectivism.

Well, a most disturbing book. Obviously, nothing all that much new in terms of the atrocities committed by Stalins regime, since these are well known nowadays. However, it is revealing in describing how reporters and news agencies lied and covered up what was actually happening and caused many thousands of Americans to run into Stalins trap. The recognition of the Soviet Union by FDR as Stalin was killing millions of his own people by starvation, which was also covered up by the press, was explained as being in part to provide needed services to Americans living and working in the Soviet Union. The embassy and state department then did absolutely nothing for them, and continued to cover up what was going on. It all supports those who claimed at the time there was a conspiracy of support for the Communists by both the press and the state department, and on Wall Street. However, it seemed that anyone who called out the Communists and suggested a conspiracy were smeared with labels like anti-semitism or later were called right wing fruit cakes. The Venona files released in the 90's supported some of the allegations from the 50's. Meanwhile, in this period, Naziism was rightly exposed for what it was, although no effort was made to stop export of technology, materials and financing for Hitler. You would think with a depression the President would want to have these corporations and banks support America with their capital instead of encouraging them to build up the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, both of which were evil. Yet FDR did nothing with regard to Germany and worse, refused to help Jews fleeing persecution, and actively supported the Soviets with financing from the Export-Import Bank after recognition by the US, refusing to help captive Americans. Maybe we should rethink his legacy. I am knocking off 1 star because there was no mention of the American International Corporation (AIC) whose members almost certainly had a big role in Stalins 5 year plans . I have always been curious as to how such an important company represented by many of the leading firms on Wall Street and Industry going back to 1915, and very active in many of the hot spots of the times is almost entirely ignored in our history. Almost to the extent one would never know it existed. FDR's connections with Wall Street, working in the same building as AIC corporate office, is also conveniently ignored

I give this book five stars, It's worth six stars, but there are only five. It seems odd to click on "I loved it" as I can't say I loved the events recounted in the book, they made me angry, particularly at Walter Duranty the lying newspaper man, and Joseph Davies, the Ambassador. It comports with what I knew before about the purges and is very well footnoted with notes and bibliography. It includes information from oral histories not previously published. A terrible time for Americans hoping for a better life than they believed they could get in the US, and for the citizens of the USSR, made terrible by the leaders of both countries.

The Great depression effected all people. Then there were thousands that thought a dream of a life in the Soviet Union would be exactly their medicine to survive. A horrific tale of US reporters refusing to tell the truth to Americans who were emigrating to the Soviet Union during the Five Year Plan under Stalin. Linton Wells a reporter lives there As a reporter and writes nothing. The Ambassador is a narcissistic fool. And how many hundreds of thousands of Americans are left in concentration camps, disappear, cannot return as the soviet Union confiscates their passports? Not only does Stalin appear like Satan, but now you can find out how Hitler disposed of so many during the the genocide. Everyone needs to read this book. It looks like Putin is to folow.

Most American are completely unaware that during the pre-War Depression Era Stalin was able to draw thousands of Americans to emigrate to Russia. Most were desperate blue collar folks, let down hard by the American economy at its lowest. Many were radicals and progressives, but others just wanted a good lifestyle for their families. Stalin advertised guaranteed employment, at higher wages, free of prejudice, and all part of glorious experiment in equality. The American press and many intellectuals promoted this vision, they themselves being utterly infatuated by the Communist hope in general and the Russian experiment in particular. For example, Walter Duranty was NY Times Moscow Bureau Chief for 14 years. He won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Russia in 1932. During most of that time he would frequently just reword Stalin's propaganda stories as news for American public under the banner of its most respected institution. He saw the vicious intentional starvation of millions of Ukrainian Soviet people and chose to report they were wildly exaggerated. He downplayed the Stalinist purge of millions, and where undeniable, apologized for them. He said Stalin's strong hand was needed because Russia was essentially an "Asiatic" culture, and it was European bias that stood against dictatorship propped up by violence when needed. Duranty had a key roll in shaping FDR's policies toward Stalin. In the end, Stalin murdered twice as many of his own civilians as even Hitler, with the tacid support or intentional blindness of the mainstream American Left. These American immigrants to Russia became innocent pawns in all this. They were used for propaganda, some were set in fake showcase communities for naive and corrupt American press to dutifully report on back home. They set up baseball teams. Their kids were to Soviet school. But in the end the conditions of all were far worse than back home, even in the Depression. Most were not allowed to leave. Many ended up in gulags or executed. Countless thousands were joined by American POWs of WWII inherited from the Nazis by Stalin. Many of these were never turned back over to their American allies, but were kept as resources on American culture for Sovoet spy operations, or as slave workers. Decades later Boris Yeltsin revealed this in the early 90s, but the ex-Soviet bureaucrats remained reluctant to make things right. And in any case, nearly all were long dead or untraceable by then. This is one chapter in the incredibly vast and tragic story of Stalinist murder larger than even the Holocaust. It is rarely told. Maybe because it doesn't have the racial element of the Holocaust. Maybe because Stalin was not as flamboyant a figure as Hitler. Maybe because the American Left was so complicit in it all, and their descendants still dominate the mass media. Maybe because Stalin was a US ally in the War. Maybe because Russia was much more isolated from America than Germany and the news didn't leak out until the gulags were much smaller (they continued after 1956, but not on the same scale). In any case, I've read a good bit on the gulags and Stalin's Russia and never heard about the baseball teams and the large number of American victims. This book does a great job of uncovering this. A little long-winded and slow, but the author is a good story-teller and a careful historian.

As one who spent over 40 years studying and using the Russian language in military and defense areas, I really appreciate this book. My old Russian teachers who taught me the language over 50 years ago told me all about the Soviet Union whence their parents had escaped. After military service and then acquiring my undergraduate degree in Russian, I spent 6 months on a USIA (the old United States Information Agency) cultural exchange exhibit traveling around the USSR, after which I returned to the military institute where I had originally studied Russian and spent 30 years teaching the language to our military intelligence personnel. This book reveals the tragedy of the generation who, out of desperation during the Great Depression, grabbed what they thought was a safety line and traveled to what was being promoted as a "workers' paradise" in the 1930s, only to be swept up in the Great Purge and the Stalin Terror and be worked to death in the Soviet GULAG. It holds a valuable lesson for today's youth, many of whom are anxious to believe the siren song of socialism and accept it as the solution to all of society's problems. As the Russians say, "measure the cloth nine times before making the first cut." I only hope that young people can be encouraged to read this book and learn from history before they, too, might be caught up in the net and perish as did the generation described in the book.

Although there are many runners up, no one fits the description of a sociopath better than Joseph Stalin. The mind begins to reel when trying to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the numbers of people that were brutally and sadistically murdered by Stalin’s regime. Some of the first of those to be seized by this paranoid regime were dozens and dozens of expatriated Americans. “One is taken one is left”—and the one that was “taken” was thrown into the back of a van; brutally beaten, tortured, and ended up with a bullet to the back of the head, to be shoved into a mass grave along with dozens of others who had met the same ignominious fate. And if you were lucky enough (and I do mean lucky) to escape this fate, many of your friends, family, or neighbors weren’t so lucky. The number of priests alone who were killed by the Stalin’s Regime was a staggering 200,000. One of the main questions that emerges is was our State Department aware of what was going on? And the answer is an unequivocal yes. At the time the American Embassy was rife with those who sided with-and secretly supported--the aims, goals, methodology and ideology of the Soviet regime. Ever ready to sing paeans of praise to Stalin this cadre of communist sympathizers found a very comfortable and safe place within the American Diplomatic Corps in Moscow during the 1930’s. Perhaps, no one is more guilty of displaying a complete contempt and disregard for the sufferings of these poor expatriated Americans than the morally bankrupt US ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph Davies. Proud, affectatious, obsessed with image, Davies chose to look the other way as these expatriated Americans were being systematically murdered. Always ready to throw lavish parties on his yacht for the Soviet elite--replete with the most expensive champagne and caviar—Davies never missed an opportunity to extoll the virtues of Stalin. Next to Joseph Davies, no one did more to help foster and create a glowing image of Stalin than the American newspaper journalist Will Duranty; a name that now stands preeminent in the Journalists Hall of Shame. Just like Davies, Duranty knew full well what was taking place in Soviet Russia and, just like Davies, chose to look the other way. Neither man had the courage or the resolve to bring these atrocities to light. Both were guilty of sending back idyllic reports and communiques to Roosevelt and to the American press. Which explains (at least in part) why Roosevelt was particularly soft on Soviet Russia, at least in the beginning. Surely the men and woman who had to suffer and endure these tragic and horrific ordeals must have felt Forsaken, but thanks to Tim Tzouliadis’ book they will not forgotten.

A friend gave me this book to read a few years ago and I was stunned to learn what had taken place when Uncle Jo(Stalin) was our "great friend and ally." Thousands of American workers were willingly sent to help Russia build its manufacturing base. They ended up in the gulag, frozen and worked to death, only a handful ever to return. If you've ever been to Marjorie Meriweather Post's mansion in Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC, which is open to the public, you will see the results of her "collecting" Russian art, jewels and artifacts when she was the wife of Ambassador Joseph E. Davies in the period just before World War II, when Russia needed to raise money to arm itself. She had many millions at her disposal as the heiress to the Post cereals fortune. She paid pennies on the dollar (ruble?) for treasures she had shipped back to the States. These had been owned by wealthy aristocrats who were purged by the Communists and their property taken by the Communist state. What a story! I bought it this time as a present for my grown grandson, a student of history, who had never learned about this chapter in college. It occurred during the Depression and run-up to WWII, so it was a busy news time, but the author, Tim Tzouliadis, has uncovered a time and place that should never have been forgotten.

Contrary to the single 1-star review, this is not some anti-communist dialectic, it is subtitled "An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia." The reader's opinion of the FDR administration should be significantly diminished in reading about his ambassador to Moscow, Joseph Davies, who spent much of his time out side of Russia, or when there, personally lowered the value of the black-market dollar exchange rate by endless shopping excursions scooping up Russian art. Davies went on to become a major adviser of FDR for Russian relations during the war and at Postdam. My only complaint is the author describes Davies as a "liberal lawyer" when he was anything but liberal. He was a corporate lawyer interested in money and deals, with no concern whatever for human rights or the gross abuses of Stalin. The book criticizes the actions or inaction of many American individuals: Americans naive enough to risk their futures and lives in the Soviet Union in the Great Depression era, Henry Ford whose book "My Life and Work" was a bestseller in Russia and whose factory ethic was admired by Stalin and who also made millions selling automobiles and factories to Stalin (the UAW's Walter Reuther worked for a time in the Gorky Ford plant), capitalists who encouraged Franklin Roosevelt to recognize the new Soviet Union as it would be good for business, President Franklin Roosevelt ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph Davies, an incompetent political appointee who was rich, acquisitive of Russian art, naive of what was going on in Russia to the point where his behavior reminds one of the Queen's Court in Alice in Wonderland. Davies written reports from the National Archives referenced in the book include accounts of Davies attendance at Russian show trials and his belief in the guilt of all those quickly convicted and executed. The book also parcels out rebuke for FDR Vice-President Henry Wallace who was easily and completely duped by the Russian NKVD in admiring the Kolyma slave camps in a visit there in 1944, US Embassy employees and State Department officers who knew Americans in Russia were being arrested and eliminated as they stepped out of the embassy onto the streets but did nothing as it would not benefit their careers, US newsmen in Russia who were wined, dined, entertained (and censored) who failed to investigate or believe in the fatality rates of the Ukrainian famine of the early 30's, and famous Americans like Paul Robeson, who was confronted by his own son for not speaking out on the execution of people they had both known in Russia. Additionally, American mining experts helped open up the rich goldfields of the arctic Kolyma, while the FDR administration, aware that the Soviet gold was mined by virtual slaves, arranged to buy the Soviet gold on NYC markets and have it shipped to the US to the extent of tens of millions a month in order to control the price and supply of gold. US Lend-Lease shipments also fed the NKVD guards in Magadan while also supplying slave ships to send them north to the Kolyma. The incompetence, greed, negligence to know, care or seek to alleviate the atrocities being committed under Stalin, by parties almost too numerous to list in US industry, government and media are as shocking as the heinous Soviet state repression itself. Harry Truman, senator at the time, is one of the few who seemed to understand the folly of saving Stalin, when he spoke against Lend-Lease and said we should help the Germans if Russia was winning, or if the Germans were winning help the Russians, in order to let the two regimes destroy each other. On reflection, it is frankly no surprise that with a pro-Soviet ideology and advisers who were blinded to the realities of Stalinism, people like like Davies, and VP like Wallace, FDR handed over Eastern Europe to Stalin after the war. Men who cared little about reports of the crimes of Stalin, or for the lives of Americans trying to flee Stalin, would hardly flinch at putting millions of others behind his Iron Curtain.

Wow! One of the best books I have ever read. Seriously, a true gem. As a teacher, it should probably replace "Animal Farm," "The Diary of Anne Frank" or "Night" as the definitive required high school text regarding Marxist atrocities committed in the 20th century starting with Lenin's Bolshevik revolution to Hitler's Democratic Socialist Nazi Party to Stalin's USSR and Mao's China. Highly researched (from both declassified US and KGB files) and a gripping story of the lost American families seeking a better life in Stalin's USSR during the Great Depression, the book delves both into personal stories like American Victor Herman (once crowned the 'Lindbergh of Russia') and his trials through the Russian Gulag system along with documenting the total complicity of FDR, his Soviet Ambassadors and his Vice President Henry Wallace- a Russian apologist who was totally hoodwinked by the propaganda machine of the Soviet Machine (KGB), only later writing an apology in 1952. Wallace had wanted to believe so badly in Stalin's vision of democracy in the new Siberian frontier that he once compared the Gulag system akin to the pioneering spirit of the American frontier. After reading this book, you may demand a major rewrite of FDR's presidency in light of its absolute complicity towards the reign of terror that was occurring within the USSR despite intelligence reports from our own embassy and British intelligence. It truly is an immersive read into real historical events of Stalin's 1930-1940's Russian nightmare and the forgotten story of Americans who perished within. Long, live liberty!

This is a seriously, scholarly, book. It is dispassionately written, yet portrays stunningly evil acts committed both by communists in the Soviet Union, and Western European, and American, ideological sympathizers — and indifferent members of the political class. It's heart-breaking and terrifying because it reveals what is better known about Nazi Germany: how seemingly decent people can facilitate the a police state, torture, summary executions, terror, slave labor camps, rape, child abuse, deliberate mass starvation, etc. There are many, many named Americans — many whom the reader may be at least slightly acquainted with — who deserved their own Nuremberg trials. Hitler learned a great deal, and was inspired by what the Soviets did before him. This is also a most deserving condemnation of collectivism.

Well, a most disturbing book. Obviously, nothing all that much new in terms of the atrocities committed by Stalins regime, since these are well known nowadays. However, it is revealing in describing how reporters and news agencies lied and covered up what was actually happening and caused many thousands of Americans to run into Stalins trap. The recognition of the Soviet Union by FDR as Stalin was killing millions of his own people by starvation, which was also covered up by the press, was explained as being in part to provide needed services to Americans living and working in the Soviet Union. The embassy and state department then did absolutely nothing for them, and continued to cover up what was going on. It all supports those who claimed at the time there was a conspiracy of support for the Communists by both the press and the state department, and on Wall Street. However, it seemed that anyone who called out the Communists and suggested a conspiracy were smeared with labels like anti-semitism or later were called right wing fruit cakes. The Venona files released in the 90's supported some of the allegations from the 50's. Meanwhile, in this period, Naziism was rightly exposed for what it was, although no effort was made to stop export of technology, materials and financing for Hitler. You would think with a depression the President would want to have these corporations and banks support America with their capital instead of encouraging them to build up the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, both of which were evil. Yet FDR did nothing with regard to Germany and worse, refused to help Jews fleeing persecution, and actively supported the Soviets with financing from the Export-Import Bank after recognition by the US, refusing to help captive Americans. Maybe we should rethink his legacy. I am knocking off 1 star because there was no mention of the American International Corporation (AIC) whose members almost certainly had a big role in Stalins 5 year plans . I have always been curious as to how such an important company represented by many of the leading firms on Wall Street and Industry going back to 1915, and very active in many of the hot spots of the times is almost entirely ignored in our history. Almost to the extent one would never know it existed. FDR's connections with Wall Street, working in the same building as AIC corporate office, is also conveniently ignored

I give this book five stars, It's worth six stars, but there are only five. It seems odd to click on "I loved it" as I can't say I loved the events recounted in the book, they made me angry, particularly at Walter Duranty the lying newspaper man, and Joseph Davies, the Ambassador. It comports with what I knew before about the purges and is very well footnoted with notes and bibliography. It includes information from oral histories not previously published. A terrible time for Americans hoping for a better life than they believed they could get in the US, and for the citizens of the USSR, made terrible by the leaders of both countries.

The Great depression effected all people. Then there were thousands that thought a dream of a life in the Soviet Union would be exactly their medicine to survive. A horrific tale of US reporters refusing to tell the truth to Americans who were emigrating to the Soviet Union during the Five Year Plan under Stalin. Linton Wells a reporter lives there As a reporter and writes nothing. The Ambassador is a narcissistic fool. And how many hundreds of thousands of Americans are left in concentration camps, disappear, cannot return as the soviet Union confiscates their passports? Not only does Stalin appear like Satan, but now you can find out how Hitler disposed of so many during the the genocide. Everyone needs to read this book. It looks like Putin is to folow.

It is useful to be reminded that utopian visions most often degrade into dystopian realities. So with those visions that deny the realities of human nature. That those in power are ultimately corrupted through the carrot of greed and the stick of fear to destroy those who become dissatisfied with the injustice of utopian plans. We are often reminded of the horrors of the holocaust and Nazi Germany but the terrors and evils of communism are written off as the fault of individuals rather than a system that supports the enslavement and debasement of individual life for the good of the collective. The irony of this book is in those Americans who lost their lives believing in a lie and those Americans like Duranty and Wallace who helped to perpetrate and popularize that lie. To this day the western world fails to remember or acknowledge what happened to those expats seeking a better life in a workers paradise. I fear we may be condemned to repeat the past we do not acknowledge.

Those with even a basic knowledge of American history know that the United States saw a huge wave of immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Far fewer know that in the depths of the Great Depression, there was actually an aggregate outflow--remarkable as it may seem, there was a short period where more were emigrating from the United States than were immigrating into it. Even more unbelievably, many of those who left our shores in search of hope headed to the Soviet Union, one of the few most despotic regimes in history. In "The Forsaken," Tim Tzouliadis tells the little-known story of those who made the tragic mistake of going of their own volition to Stalinist Russia. Many from all walks of life and from all parts of the country made that journey, including those who worked at a Ford plant that temporarily existed in the USSR and young baseball players in their late teens and early twenties (before the Terror of the 1930s, the author relates that for a brief moment baseball was on its way to becoming a major sport in the Soviet Union, complete with Russian-language radio coverage). As the 1930s progressed, the brief moments when the American emigrants were enjoying their new lives were eclipsed by increasing apprehension and then horror as the Terror set in. As anyone familiar with Communism knows, it is not in keeping with human nature, so Communist states always end up resorting to violence in order to maintain control ("we're building a perfect society...and if you disagree, you die"). Such regimes always think that individual eggs are worth breaking in their (obviously eventually unavailing) attempts to make their utopian omelets, and the author provides a vivid description of the murders and imprisonments of the Terror and of the desperation of the remaining Americans who were trapped in that hell to find a way to escape. After 1937, however, it was virtually impossible to escape the Soviet Union. Matters weren't helped by American journalists, ambassadors, and politicians who exhibited next to no sympathy for the Americans' plight. Some Americans looked at the situation with a sense of realpolitik, but other high officials were simply duped by the USSR--Stalin eventually at times had contempt for President Roosevelt's naïvete concerning his nation, and this volume is a reminder of how horrifyingly close that putative adult Henry Wallace came to becoming president--after the vice president's visit to the Soviet gulag camps, one of the Russian prisoners told one of the U.S. prisoners that "you Americans are really stupid." The gulag was indeed about as close as one could come to hell on earth, and Tzouliadis is unsparing in his description of just how horrifying those camps were. Unfortunates of many nationalities ended up as prisoners in the Soviet gulag system, including innumerable prisoners of war that ended up in Russian hands. The author tells the inspiring story of two Americans who persevered for years and against all odds ended up being able to return to the United States. Readers of this book will feel sympathy for all who ended up in the gulag, both the POWs who were taken there by force and those who made the naïve but exceptionally foolish decision to emigrate to the USSR. Many of the latter who were baseball players were very young. While few make a decision as dumb as thinking that the Soviet Union would be a great place to live, most if not all of us did a few stupid things and made a few dumb decisions way back in our own late teens/early twenties yesteryears--but virtually all of the unfortunate baseball players never got a chance to live to middle or old age and look back on their youthful mistakes as things long, long lived down. "The Forsaken" certainly can't be described as an uplifting read, but it is compelling. It records an event in history that should be remembered lest it be repeated, and serves as a reminder of how truly hideous Soviet Russia was, of how little bureaucrats in free societies care about those they represent in many cases, and of just how lucky America was to have Harry Truman, whatever his failings, as president instead of Henry Wallace in the earliest stages of the Cold War.

Everyone should really read this book. This is a shocking, sad part of history that is not covered on the History Channel (which presents superficial accounts and entertainment) or in most other history books. This book goes beyond just the American victims who happened to be in the Soviet Union when Stalin was in power. When a visiting American delegation asked Stalin about missing clergy he said they annihilated them, but that the problem was that the clergy had not yet been completely annihilated. Loy Henderson an American embassy official in Moscow reported that the last Catholic bishop in the U.S.S.R. was shot on June 27, 1937. Yet President Roosevelt told the American public that Stalin's regime was at the forefront of peace and democracy and that the people of the Soviet Union had freedom of religion. Meanwhile the Red Army invaded other countries and 20 million were exterminated under Stalin. Some historians say that the figure is actually millions more. The atrocities and torture methods used by the communists were beyond belief. Why is it that we hear almost nothing of this? Read the book and come to your own conclusions.

Wow, this book is incredible. I am something of a Cold War history buff and I learned a lot by reading this book. The most important "take away" from Tzouliadis' work is the incredible amount of lies involved with the USSR. The entire country was founded on lies, and the leadership had to continue these lies all the way until Gorbachev decided enough was enough. Gorbachev lived through the Ukraine famine as a child and both of his grandfathers were victims of Stalin's Great Terror, so he knew evil. As an American the most startling discovery for me is how the USSR had so much help from American politicians and journalists, plus all the fellow travelers, useful idiots, and sympathizers who helped with their propaganda campaign. Here are just a few examples: - Joseph Davies, second US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, '36-'38. Davies' predecessor started out with admiration for the USSR, but soon came to realize he had been duped and became a strident anti-communist. Not Davies! During his tenure in Moscow, Americans who were trapped in the Soviet Union came in droves to our embassy and begged for help to get back home to the States. From the ambassador's official residence at Spaso House, screams could be heard in the wee hours as the NKVD arrested people during Stalin's Great Terror. Davies completely ignored the plight of Americans as thousands were sent to the gulag, and his reports back to the State Department revealed that everything was running smoothly. - Henry Wallace, VP from '41-'45. This guy should get the Idiot of the 20th Century award. During WWII he flies to Magadan for a 25-day tour of the Kolyma region of Siberia. The NKVD put up a full-scale Potemkin Village to show Wallace how wonderful it was. All the prisoners were removed and replaced with well-fed "volunteers" (NKVD personnel) to hide the reality of the most inhospitable and brutal penal colony in the world. At this prison more than one-third of the prisoners died every year. Wallace returned to the US and portrayed the Soviet Union in a positive light to everyone. Later in life a gulag survivor told Wallace the truth and he wrote an apologetic book about how wrong he was. - Walter Duranty, Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times from '22-'36. Duranty may have done more than any other American to further the Soviet Union and hide its reality. He won Pulitzers for articles that were based on lies. Some have alleged Duranty was a paid informer for the Soviet MVD (predecessor of the NKVD). He hid the famine in the Ukraine that killed millions. He declared Stalin's show trials "fair." Journalists like Duranty played an active role in helping the Soviet government hide its atrocities. One more thing I found profoundly interesting and disturbing was the fate of American servicemen from WWII and the Korean War who were sent to the gulag. When Soviet soldiers liberated Nazi prison camps in Germany they apparently put most of the American POWs on trains and sent them to labor camps in Siberia. It happened to thousands of our troops and our government abandoned them. It happened to our troops captured by the Chinese in Korea too, but in smaller numbers. That is an absolute travesty and I believe there needs to be a reckoning for all of our troops that died as prisoners in the USSR, even at this late date.

Tim Tzouliadis has researched and compiled a revelation of evil in the 20th century that is relevant today, as the March 25, 2022 story in Time magazine is headlined: "Moscow Has Forcibly Taken More than 400,000 Ukrainians to Russia, Ukraine Says". This book is a masterpiece of reporting, thoroughly documented to establish the historicity of the fantastic sadism in Stalin's gulag system. While describing and explaining depths of tragedy the storyteller carries his readers along without weighing us down in the muck and mire of Russian genocide. It reads like a detective story which vindicates a search for truth. It is an extraordinary historical account and act of courage.

Eloquent, wonderfully written. I’ve read many books on the history of the USSR but this one touched me deeply. These are not only unknown Communists who were following a pipe dream of Utopia in the USSR, many were hardworking family men who moved with their families because they were unable to make a living in the depression. Personal, political, historical, psychological and thorough scholarship makes a wonderful read for students of history. Anyone thinking that Socialism is a solution, especially when combined with political correctness that defines unpopular ideas as heretical should read this.

If you have read "Journey Into the Whirlwind" by Eugenia Ginzburg or "The Great Terror: A Reassessment" by Robert Conquest you are probably familiar with the mass murder of 20,000,000 people during the Joseph Stalin regime and even after. You may not be familiar with systematic murder of three generations of Americans that numbered in the thousands. This book does not illicit shock as much as disgust at how lame the U.S. government was under FDR and yes, even later U.S. administrations. Some may believe that the first generation of Americans may have brought it on themselves for emigrating to the U.S.S.R. during the great depression in search of work, but I don't personally buy it as they were still U.S. citizens. But leaving WW II survivors or POWs and Korean war POWs in the Soviet Gulags to rot is unconscionable. I have acquaintances and relatives who profess that they are on top of American politics. Perhaps they should read this. They may determine that left-wing socialism does not often turn out as anticipated. I wrote a review once for "The Great Terror" and remember that I commented that as they say truth is often stranger than fiction. Indeed it is. This book is close to a five star "must read". My only issue was the writing style of Tzouladis. Too often I had to reread passages to gain clarity. On the other hand, it could be just because much of the information concerning the American bungling of the issues had to be read multiple times to let it sink in. Again, if you have not read any of the other excellent books available concerning the greatest social catastrophe of modern times i.e., the Russian revolution and aftermath then you should appreciate this offering. As a student of Russian history and literature for many years you could do worse than choosing this.

Superbly written, devastating book. Why it took an English man, rather than an American, to write about this appalling page of American history, is shocking! Especially today, this book should be required reading in colleges by all students. The sad thing is that most millennium who are being fed leftist ideology for the last 2 to decades by marxist professors, associate Communism not with the combined deaths of up to 200 mios people worldeide in the last century, but with a "Charismatic Bearded College Professor. SAD!! Another great book along these lines is "The Black Book of Communism" originally published in French, but later translated into English.

Not too far from where I live is a small National Cemetery. Way in the back corner are a half dozen or so markers of World War II German POW's. Some of those German soldiers buried there committed suicide because at the end of World War II, the US Government was going to repatriate them back to the Soviet Union. You see, they came from a part of Ukraine, settled by Germans, under Catherine the Great, when the Germans invaded the USSR, they joined the German Army. They apparently also understood what awaited them in Stalin's Russia. This is just a side bar in the great history, The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia by Tim Tzouliadis. The author tells the story of what became of American nationals, who out of committment to communism, hunger during the depression, or just plain naivete emmigrated from the United States to the Soviet Union during the great depression. Out of tens of thousands of immigrants from the US to the USSR during the 1930s, very few lived to tell the tale of their experiences under the greatest terror conceived by any dictator. Stalin out of his own twisted paranoia had many of them executed or sentenced to the slow death of the Soviet Gulag's. But, more disturbing than that is the fact that the US Government, under Franklin Roosevelt, knew what Stalin was doing to US nationals, including downed American Pilots originally captured by the Germans or who crash landed in Soviet territory during our war with Japan, and quiety acquiesced to allowing them to be executed or imprisoned by the Soviets. So much for "Nothing to fear but fear itself." Unless of course your President, for lack of a better description admires and kisses up to a Soviet thug. The Author paints a clear picture of how the first American Ambassadors to the USSR were so enamored of Stalin the Soviet experiment they were willing to look the other way. It also paints a sad picture of how the Roosevelt administration contributed to the Soviet "Terror" by choosing to ignore it, only to be followed by the Truman administration's gullibility when it came to trusting Stalin and his regime. This book will hopefully open American eyes to just how not great FDR and give 'em hell Harry really did this nation an diservice when it came to dealing with the Soviet Union. As I mentioned earlier, there are side bars here, namely how the Soviet's used our lend lease materials, trucks, ships, etc. to feed the terror, namely transport people to the Gulags, and not fight the Germans. This is a well written history, but deeply disturbing because of the facts it reveals. This book is highly recommended if one wants to really understand how the United States government by its elected an appointed officials aided Stalin's terror against not only his own people, but foreigners too.

After years of reading about Soviet history and the effect of Stalin's purges on his country and the world, I didn't know that I'd missed such an important piece of the story: the fate of thousands of US emigrants to the USSR in the thirties, as well as that of Allied POWs "re"captured by the Soviets after the war. This is a fascinating true story that Tim Tzouliadis expertly relates, using as sources books now out of print, formerly ignored, by some of the ex-patriot Americans, as well as the materials that were open for a mere glimpse in 90's Russia, only to be closed again under Putin. We know from books like "Ten Days that Shook the World" and the movie it inspired, "Reds", that many Communist idealists and fellow travellers thought of the Soviet Union as a beacon in the night, especially when the Great Depression covered the plains of the US with its dusty hopelessness. We have received more and more information since Khruschev's "secret speech" and perestroika following about exactly how far-reaching the purges of the Stalin era were. And there have been a couple of books from those of the American diaspora in Russia, notably from former Detroiters Victor Herman and Thomas Svoglio, but I had certainly never heard of them until reading about them in this book. But Mr. Tzouliadis fleshes out the experience of many of those who left the US, not all because of their ideology, but primarily because of the promise of good jobs. As "The Forsaken" reveals, they not only found that the jobs offered with little pay were untenable, and that the welcoming Soviet authorities could turn cold towards anyone they thought suspicious on a dime. There are not many Thomasoviches and Harryviches in Moscow, so it's clear that if a great many Americans moved to the USSR in the thirties, they eventually went somewhere else. Tzouliadis's research and earnest (if sometimes preachy) writing stops short of answering where all these men, women and children ended up. But the story of the "Soviet Detroit", and the many there who were denounced (and the many whose children and grandchildren were denounced), makes clear that for a great percentage of them, the end occurred at the point of a gun to the back of the head, or languishing in the gulags. The American embassy, throughout the Soviet era, according to Tzouliadis, failed to help any of these people, although many came to Spaso house time and time again to plead for help finding their absconded passports to return home. There is some suggestion that this followed a somewhat McCarthy-esque attitude that the sojourners had willingly given up their American citizenship, and had done this for Communist sympathies, but Tzouliadis does not bring up evidence as much for this as for benign neglect. In fact, he notes the inhabitants of the Ambassador's home were quite frequently very friendly and supportive of the Soviet regime and their ends, in particular, Joseph Davies, the infamous writer of the tome and eventual movie, "Mission to Moscow" (which gives Tzouliadis the opportunity for his most clever chapter heading, "Submission to Moscow"). Davies waxed almost romantic in his description of "the great man" when he met Stalin, and to his death kept a signed picture of the dictator framed in silver in his home. Which brings up another tragedy discussed by Tzouliadis: the failure of American politicians and celebrities to question or censure any of the acts of the Soviet authorities, even after it was clear the purges had begun. If Henry Ford, Paul Robeson, former voce president Henry Wallace, or even FDR are among your heroes, you will not be able to avoid experiencing some angst reading the cooperation they offered and their failure to notice (or admit when they noticed) some of the atrocities occurring under their noses. To their credit, many former "fellow travellers", including Robeson and John Steinbeck, and Henry Wallace himself, eventually were able to acknowledge how far from reality the "worker's paradise" really was. It is a pity there exists no book written by an American that presents such a stark description of the fate of their countrymen caught in Stalin's talons. On the other hand, Tzouliadis' Greek-British background may give him credibility as an observer ostensibly less interested than one of us might be. Highly recommended.

Like most books about Stalin and the Great Terror, The Forsaken is a troubling and unsettling endeavor. It awakens the conscience and has the unintended effect of making us grateful for the lives of privilege we now lead. Tim Tzouliadis is an excellent historian and his narrative is both vivid and scholarly. It's a tough balance to maintain, but this author succeeds in the spirit of Anthony Beevor (my favorite historian). What I found most tragic was the fate of those GIs kidnapped from western Europe after the war. They spent the rest of their days in the GULAG digging out gold, uranium or mercury with their bare hands. Some of this made for tough reading but it is exquisitely told. Most of the forsaken made the mistake of traveling to the Soviet Union for work and handing over to the Russian government their documents which were then funneled to NKVD agents who made their way back to the United States. Without papers they became, in effect, Soviet citizens which left them with no protections once the state began to eat and destroy its own people during the Great Terror of the thirties. In this account we find that nearly 20 million people were arrested and soon found their way into the GULAG machine--if they were not executed in the basement of the Lubianka or upon a Katyn-like field first. The Roosevelt Administration, particularly Ambassador Joseph Davies, were the secondary villains of this tale. All it would have taken, on their parts, to free the individuals (who were once full-fledged Americans) would have been for FDR to link lend/lease aid to the freeing of citizens. He declined to wield any stick and gave the USSR a bevy of riches while US ships made the evil of Kolyma possible. Roosevelt's confusion regarding Stalin was horrifying and the dictator's contempt for FDR was palpable. He played and manipulated our president with astonishing ease. I could go on and on about this work as it was absolutely superb. I do not know Tim Tzouliadis personally so am not biased in his favor but can honestly state that this was the best book I have read, thus far, in 2008.

Harrowing account of many idealistic Americans who emigrated to the Soviet Union as their salvation during the Great Depression. Some of these people went to work in a Ford plant making Model A cars and thought their stay would be temporary, only to have their American passports confiscated by the Soviets. Many of these Americans were sucked up into Stalin's paranoid reign of terror and found themselves sent to Siberian gulags where they were starved, tortured, and forced to do back-breaking labor. They received no help from the American embassy and the accounts of these atrocities were dismissed by many Soviet apologists such as Walter Durranty and Paul Robeson. These are amazing stories of human endurance while not losing their humanity. My one complaint is that there are no pictures of these incredible people such as Victor Herman, Robert Robinson, and Alexander Dolgun or of the infamous gulag Kolyma.

Wow, I learned a lot from this book and at the same time immensely enjoyed reading it. I had no ideas so many Americans left America during the depression to go work in Russia. It’s hard to believe an entire county can be so caught up in terror. If you are interested in history, or if you are interested in the Russian culture or language then you should read this book.

What can I say that has not already been written? This is a great piece of historical writing. The author showed just how our own government officials allowed the Soviets to torture and kill our own citizens rather than inconvenience themselves with defending them. He also shows the reasons for doing so: Self Interest. It's amazing just to see how many of our politicians on the left were praising Stalin over and over for being so democratic and open to religion, while everything screamed just the opposite! Hell, our government actually turned out a propaganda film praising Stalin's liberalism that even the Russians had a hard time not laughing at! Tzouliadis shows in depth just how our politicians and others were sometimes duped by the Soviets. It also shows the callous disregard for human life and suffering by our extremely rich diplomats, politicians and Stalin and his thugs. This is one of the best books I have read on the subject, by far. I originally bought it because I wanted to hear how an experiment like baseball worked over in Russia. He deals with that slightly, but quickly moves to the meat of the book. Tons of information for a mere 400 pages. We, as Americans, have this almost built in belief that if we went to a foreign country, "They can't treat me that way! I'm an American! I have certain rights!" Not over there you don't. I know this event was a tragedy in every sense of the word, but this was a gem of a book! It was a page turner that I was sad to see end. I know that sounds terrible......Sorry.

This book is mostly a general recounting of Stalins terror and purging of millions, with an emphasis on the American citizens who got caught up in it and mostly never got out. It's a quick, gripping read, partly because the tale is so horrifying it holds your attention. The book suffers from an understandable lack of information about the main subject matter, the Americans in the USSR; much information is still kept secret, or was destroyed, and few survived to tell their tale. I found it a little odd that many, many times the author mentions Americans who were reported to be in the USSR terror camps, or were arrested, with some snippet of information such as what town or state they were from, but basically never does any original sleuthing to dig out who they were and if their families knew anything about how they got there and what became of them. With the vast census and other public records now available on line, it wouldn't be difficult, I suspect, to more precisely identify some of these people.

This is a fascinating piece of historical work, depicting a slice of Gulag history that was long neglected. The research is excellent, the writing crisp and direct. My only criticism would be that, now and then, the author drifts off-topic, but even then there is some relevance to these excursions. I'm very familiar with the Soviet Union of the Fifties and Sixties and can attest to the author's capture of the environment of oppression that lingered there even in the early years just after Stalin's death. But most important, Tzouliadis gives life to those poor souls who went to the Soviet Union hoping for a better future for their families, then ended up dead in the hell of the Gulag. Words really can't capture the enormity of this tragedy, but Tzouliadis gets about as close to it as a writer can. Highly recommended!

I happened across a tweet were people put the 4 books that changed their thought and this book was listed. I had just finish a book that day and thought I would give this book a try, so I had no or low expectations. I never even thought about American’s emigrating from America to Russia during the depression or honestly any period of time. I found the book fascinating from that perspective, but then even more fascinating what they experienced from there. It is amazing that any survived. Just when you think the book is coming to an end a new “generation” of Americans are added to the mix. Great book!

There remain only a very few books on the market that cover the experiences of Americans who emigrated from the USA into Stalin's Soviet Union between, roughly, 1928 and 1935. Especially during the early USA depression years, a modestly large number of (mostly) hourly factory workers became discouraged in the USA and emigrated to the USSR. Within a few years, most of them realized they had made a grave mistake, but they had had their USA passports confiscated and were refused permission to return to the USA. This book is one of only a few remaining in print … the others have mysteriously disappeared from the market. The duplicity of some of Roosevelt's cabinet officers is a disgrace, even today 70-80 years later. I recommend this as a reading for all those who aspire to understand a bigger and more profound picture than presented in current media. But be prepared for some very sobering reading and some frightening experiences experienced by simple Americans who thought they were doing something good for their families even as they descended into an abyss.

This is a riveting story of mostly idealistic Americans seeking a better life under communism in Soviet Russia during the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930's. Their stories are tragic. Many tried to escape, mostly without success. Surprisingly, many ignored what they saw and continued to believe in a system that consumed them (and tens of million others from many nations) right up to the point where they faced a firing squad with a deep ditch just behind where they stood. In most cases, those who carried out Stalin's pogroms were themselves murdered, partly to remove witnesses from a gullible and sometimes complicit West. Required reading for starry-eyed dreamers.

Tim Tzouliadis does a masterful job of unmasking the tragedy of untold numbers of Americans, some lured by the promise of jobs and food during a time of great privation and some drawn in by the promise of Utopia, who made their way to the Soviet Union during the 1930's, most of whom became grease for the Soviet Terror Machine. While the larger issue in "The Forsaken" is the sociopathic "Cult of Stalin" and the gruesome work of the NKVD and of the doomed, innocent souls who perished in prison basements, killing fields, transport trains or in the constellation of camps throughout the Soviet hinterland, Tzouliadis, through the strength of his exhaustive research and powerful narrative, allows us to glimpse this tragedy through many different lenses- from the hapless and disillusioned Americans who realized much too late that their fate had been sealed, communist mouthpieces and fellow travelers like Walter Duranty and Vice President Henry Wallace, the gullible and vain Joseph Davies, and the contemptible Paul Robeson. Valuable insight into the prevailing attitudes of the elites of the time are also revealed in the statements of Franklin Roosevelt ("...I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war.") and J.K. Huddle ("...The other seven eighths of these persons now living in the Soviet Union represent merely flotsam and jetsam on the sea of life. They are born, live, and die, and their existence has probably no individual effect on any governing or supervising authority."), as well as the reactions of Western intellectuals and academics in the post Stalin years to the personal accounts of those fortunate enough to have survived the gulags. Tzouliadis' inclusion of the Third Generation- American soldiers who disappeared into the gulags in the final stages of World War II and during the Korean War, and the how they were cowardly sacrificed by the State Department- for the sake of political expediency for sure, but also in some part because of the ideological leanings of some within the Department- leant a final, tragic dimension to a story that, sadly, can never have a happy or satisfying ending. As the title of my review suggests, this books is a must read for those who are interested in Russian/Soviet History, communism, the Great Depression, and US/USSR relations. However, this book should also be required reading for those who still believe that socialism/communism is a viable and benign system that has never been properly applied. The historical record is replete with empirical evidence of applied communism, and this book is a damning indictment of that system.

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.

This is a very well written account of Soviet/socialist history very relevant today. This would make a great movie, but I doubt it could be made by Hollywood since they lean socialist/communist. We should all know about Stalin and his predecessors, Lenin and Trotsky who trained Stalin well. What surprised, and disappointed me was Roosevelt’s interest, and almost respect, for Stalin and socialism. Fortunately, we learn, Churchill knew better. While some have criticized Robeson for his inaction, I understand his position, it was not a great time for blacks in America. This was a great read.

I bought this book out of curiosity for the subject matter, not know how deep the author went into this period of history. That the subjects of the book were communists or at least sympathetic to it was not my biggest surprise...the absolute refusal of the major political forces in this country to "upset" Joseph Stalin was beyond the pale. I firmly recommend this book to any serious student of history, before this subject is long forgotten. Thank you for a great book.

I stumbled upon this book several years ago while researching my father’s life. I had been having trouble understanding why his family emigrated to Russia in 1931, but after reading "The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia", I had my answers. While reading this book, I decided to look in the index and was very excited to see that Mr. Tzouliadis had mentioned my family. I contacted him, and he directed me to the National Archives, where I was able to see the documents related to my family as well as many of those mentioned in this book. Tim Tzouliadis did a phenomenal job in uncovering the stories behind the people who are part of this little-known part of American history. I was saddened to read what happened to so many who thought their lives would be improved after their move, but at the same time, so happy to finally learn my father’s story through this book and the letters and memos that Tim helped me find. I am forever in his debt and highly recommend this book.

The Stalinist Great Terror is certainly not unknown to history, though it can never be known well enough. Tim Tzouliadis has done us all a great service in his well-researched and beautifully-writen account of an important but little-known aspect of the Terror: The captivity, imprisonment and murder of thousands of Americans who went to the USSR in the 1930s, some out of communist solidarity, others simply for economic opportunity when they could find none in Depression-era America. The book provides an excellent overview of the Great Terror in general, but one of its major focuses is the failure of the U.S. government - including the particularly feckless Ambassador Joseph Davies but also FDR and other key figures (among them several legendary U.S. diplomats) - to take any meaningful action to help these trapped Americans; there was no Hiram Bingham or Raoul Wallenberg in this crowd. If you don't know much about the Great Terror, you should, and this book is a great place to start. Students of U.S. diplomatic history will also learn much.

What is amazing is how meticulously Mr Tzouliadis has researched his work. Almost every paragraph has one or more footnotes, and his bibliography is seventeen pages long. As others have noted, the story is tragic, and there's a lot of complicity by plutocrats in the FDR Administration and the press of the 1930s. In fairness, as the author points out, the US was attempting to forge a coalition at the time with Stalin to fight Germany, but the level of total disregard for Americans (and others) imprisoned in the Gulag on the part of the FDR diplomatic corps is nothing short of criminal. Indeed, Joseph Davies, the US ambassador to the USSR 1937-38, comes across as a total buffoon. Sadly, much of the Soviet archives opened in the 1990s will probably be shut down by Mr Putin, a former head of the KGB, as the details of the Gulag and Stalin's obscene genocide are brutally embarrassing (as if that should be a surprise). As a result of Mr Tzouliadis' recommendation, I have been moved to obtain a hard-to-find copy of Thomas Sgovio's book, an account of his quarter-century in the USSR, much of it as a Gulag prisoner in Kolyma. If first-hand accounts of life in the Gulag interest you, be sure to read Alexander Dolgun's book, as well as Janusz Bardach's story. Well done, Mr Tzouliadis.

Struggling to escape the Great Depression strangling the United States in the 1930’s, American workers emigrated to the Soviet Union, lured by the promise of jobs and a better life in the ‘Workers’ Paradise,’ and found themselves trapped by the Soviet state, sent to slave labor camps or shot. The eye-opening indifference of the American government to their plight is clearly shown, and a frightening reminder that once you leave the country, you’re on your own.

Damning history of the inept management of foreign relations by FDR's administration and their love affair with anything communist. I puzzles me why it is that expressing a negative attitude toward communism is now a joke and is supposed to brand one as some sort of crackpot not to be taken seriously. The threat was real at the time, and this book clearly documents the incredibly horrific actions and attitudes of the communist party in Russia. Anyone that still believes in the greatness of communism needs to read this book - or better - go live in North Korea for a few years. They haven't changed. The West has chosen to ignore this reality and instead idolize and adapt this corrosive philosophy into contemporary social (and socialist) policies. Wake up - government is FORCE.

Love this book. I've been reading it on and off for a week now. Good writeup on the rotten kleptocratic criminal enterprise that Bolshevism was, in the context of desperate Ford workers whom a capitalist tycoon merrily sold down the river to a Marxist despot. A tale of outrageous hypocrisy, implicating everyone involved on both sides of the Cold War. If you're looking for a happy ending, this isn't the book for you.

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!!!

Imagine this: not only to undergo persecution, disruption of your life, arrest, torture, violence and a 25 years sentence in a Gulag. No that is not all. Having to undergo this horror under the complete indifference of your government's officials, now that is priceless! The author wrote a beutiful and sad book about the depravity of the Soviet system under the leadership (or should we say "butchership") of Joseph Stalin. This book will upset you, indignate you, and make you thankful to all the powers above that you were born in the USA, and you are here to stay. Those thousands of Americans who relocated to the Soviet Union in the 1930s made a colossal mistake and ended up paying for it with their lives. Their stories will stay with you long after putting the book down, especially those of Robert Robinson, Thomas Sgovio and Victor Herman (whose autobiographies are sold on Amazon.com).

The most immediate subject of this interesting history is the little known saga of a few thousand Americans who during the hard times of the Great Depression left the United States for the Soviet Union to find a better life. In a display of remarkable scholarship, Tzouliadis hunts down the small public record of the fate of these people. After brief periods of employment in manufacturing or agriculture, some building Ford cars in a new Russian plant, most of these Americans were arrested, stripped of their US passports, and either shot outright or sent to the Gulag for what remained of the short and brutal life of the inhabitants of Stalin's slave labor camps. By some remarkable good fortune, however, two of the Americans managed to survive the camps long enough to be released during Kruschev's brief mid-1950's retrenchment, return to the United States, and tell their stories to the world. Tzouliadis uses these individual stories as the framework of the book. But the Soviets' treatment of this small group of Americans is only the narrow factual setting of a much larger picture of "government by terror." Mr. Tzouliadis tells the compelling story of how the Soviet Union, in the name of Communist doctrine and social justice, terrorized its population. The numbers of those arrested and killed are mind-numbing, ranging in the tens of millions. The Soviet state, for example, in the early 1930's systematically starved to death some 5-7 million innocent souls in the Ukraine and other regions of the USSR. In a masterful inter-weaving of individual personal stories and high level Soviet policy measures, the author recounts how the Soviet secret police, the KGB and its predecessor organizations, became an integral part of life in the Soviet Union and the personal instrument of Stalin's repression -- arresting and either shooting to death or sending to "corrective" labor camps millions of innocent people for a short life of starvation and crushing work in conditions so brutal that it beggars the imagination. But the real theme of the book is a phenomenon that has troubled fair minded people for decades - not how Stalin and the Soviets could have committed such atrocities, not how a seemingly benevolent social theory could be used for such malevolent ends, but how so many of the Western intellectual elite, in government, in academia, and in the arts, could have embraced Communism, an ideology and political system that has no equal in the history of the world in repression and mass murder. Throughout the book, Tzouliadis almost wonders aloud how people like George Bernard Shaw, Paul Robeson, Erskine Caldwell, and Jean Paul Sartre, among many others, could have spoken and written so warmly of Communism and the Soviets in the face of mountains of evidence of their atrocities. The most troublesome question in this regard, however, is not how writers, artists and academicians could have supported such horrors, but how people in the US Government could have done so. Mr. Tzouliadis throughout this book raises troubling questions about President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his New Deal advisors, and the political left. How could people in such positions, who came to power in the name of social justice and whose job it was to know what was happening in the Soviet Union, have so ardently supported Stalin and the Soviet Union. Almost from the moment he took office in 1933, FDR used his personal prestige and the great power of his office to validate a regime ruled by gangsters. He extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union in November 1933, completely bypassing the State Department, and at precisely the point in time when Stalin had completed the Ukranian terror famine in the winter of 1932-1933. An estimated 5 to 7 million people were systematically starved to death at that time. With the possible exception of Mao's ghastly measures in China, there is almost no greater horror in the history of the world, yet Roosevelt extended the friendly hand of the United States to Stalin's barbaric regime that perpetrated this genocide. Whispering into Roosevelt's ear at the time was Walter Duranty, the corrupt New York Times reporter stationed in Moscow, who made a career of disseminating to the world the most transparent falsehoods and disinformation concocted by his Soviet masters. "It was Walter Duranty," says the author, "more than any other individual, who persuaded Franklin Roosevelt of the wisdom of granting diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union." In 1932, Duranty , a British citizen, won a Pulitzer prize for his reporting in The New York Times in which he assured the American public that the Ukranian famine was a myth. He later reported the Stalin show trials in the most favorable and complimentary way. Duranty has since been exposed as having intentionally falsified the facts in response to Soviet emoluments or intimidation, even to the extent that in recent years there has been an effort to revoke his Pulitzer prize. How could Roosevelt, Tzouliadis asks, one of our greatest presidents and one who was committed to the common man, with all the worldwide resources of the US Government at his disposal, have ignored the steady drumbeat of horror emanating from the Soviet Union and entertained for a moment the momentous falsehoods disseminated by Walter Duranty, described by Malcolm Muggeridge, a British journalist who served with Duranty in Moscow, as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have ever met." But this was only the beginning of Roosevelt's affinity for "Uncle Joe" Stalin and the Soviet Union. Roosevelt's first ambassador to the Soviet Union was William C. Bullitt, a wealthy Philadelphian and friend of the president whose affection for the Soviets is reflected in his short-lived marriage to Louise Bryant. She was a fervent supporter of the Bolsheviks and the widow of John Reed, author of the famous "Ten Days That Shook The World," a 1919 paean to the Bolshevik revolution. But when Bullitt himself, after three years of exposure to the real Soviets in Moscow, changed his opinion and told Roosevelt in the frankest of terms that the Soviets were really mass murderers, what did Roosevelt do? He yanked Bullitt and appointed Joseph E. Davies as his successor. It is difficult to know where to begin to describe the character flaws of Davies. He was a personal friend and golfing buddy of FDR, having served with him in the Wilson administration. Davies was general counsel to one of the Post companies owned by Marjorie Merriweather Post, socialite daughter of the Post cereal fortune, one of the wealthiest people in the world, and a major contributor to FDR's 1936 campaign. After he caught Marjorie's eye in 1935, Davies divorced his wife of 33 years to become her third husband. It seems that his principal qualification for diplomatic duty was his friendship with FDR, and he reminds one of George W. Bush's 2003 appointment of Michael Brown as head of FEMA based on his experience as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. Davies diary recorded that on January 5, 1937 he and Marjorie set sail from the US on their journey to the Soviet Union and that "Walter Duranty is aboard." The first thing that Davies did upon arrival in Moscow was to attend six days of one of Stalin's show trials then in progress, universally regarded even then, and this was known to Davies, as the most outrageous of shams. He sat in the first row of the proceedings along with Walter Duranty, thereby proclaiming to the world that the United States thought these political purges were just fine. He then reported to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and later to the public in his book "Mission To Moscow," that the trials had uncovered real conspiracies to overthrow the Soviet government for which the defendants, Stalin's potential political rivals, were justly punished. It was as obvious then as it is now that the KGB had tortured confessions out of these unfortunate victims. At the show trials, the accused fell all over themselves to proclaim their participation in the most fantastic of plots, all in an effort to avoid further torture to themselves and their families. During this time, Davies became a tool of the Soviets, courting personal favors from Stalin and his henchmen, while at the same time he and Marjorie were cruising the Baltic in one of Marjorie's yachts and buying up Russian national treasures looted by the Bolsheviks in the early days of the revolution. After two years of service in the Russian capital, Marjorie had had enough of the Russian winters and so FDR replaced Davies as ambassador in 1938. On his return to the United States, Davies wrote the bestseller "Mission To Moscow" (1941), which was a loose collection of diary entries, letters, and reports to the State Department during Davies' time in Moscow. In the book and later movie, which were praised by FDR, Davies found the Soviet attacks on Poland and Finland to be to be justified as self-defense and made only benign reference to Stalin's 1939 pact with Hitler, which laid the groundwork for the shameless German and Soviet attacks on Poland and the start of World War II. The book was eventually made into a movie starring Walter Huston as Davies, a copy of which was duly presented to Stalin by Davies himself in 1943. Davies was eventually awarded the Order of Lenin in gratitude for his unwavering support of the Soviet dictator. The award was presented by Andrei Vishinsky, the prosecutor in the show trials, and a person who is now universally regarded as a ruthless villain and stooge of Stalin. As Tzouliadis points out, however, these incidents are only a taste of Roosevelt's consistent support of the Soviet Union throughout the twelve years of his presidency. Perhaps the most shameful episode is the now infamous Katyn Forest Massacre. After the Soviet Union seized its half of Poland pursuant to the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of 1939, the Soviets shot, and buried in mass pits, some 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals. Some of these people were buried in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. When the Germans took this territory in 1941 as part of their attack on the Soviet Union, they discovered this mass grave and announced the atrocity to the world. The Soviets promptly denied it and accused the Nazis. There followed several investigations of the incident, which concluded that it was the Soviets who had committed the murders. One of these investigations was done at FDR's request by his friend, George Earle, former governor of Pennsylvania and then an officer in the US Navy. Earle concluded that it was the Soviets who had shot the Polish officers and communicated that to Roosevelt in a written report. When Roosevelt rejected the report, Earle threatened to publish it himself, only to be specifically ordered by Roosevelt, as commander of the armed forces, not to do so. Earle was then transferred to meaningless duty in a remote area of the Pacific for the remainder of the war. With pungent irony, Tzouliadis references the many socialists who found their way into the Roosevelt administration, many of whom used their positions to skew US policy in favor of the Soviet Union and to disseminate disinformation that served no other purpose than to promote the interests of the Soviet Union. This conduct was not limited to secret Soviet agents like State Department official Alger Hiss or White House staffer Lauchlin Currie. Roosevelt's closest advisor, Harry Hopkins, who actually lived in the White House during the war, was such a deeply committed socialist that he carried out the US aid program to Russia "with a zeal which approached fanaticism." [John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance (Viking Press 1947), p. 90. General Deane was head of the US Military Mission in Moscow during WWII.] He used his position as administrator of the Lend-Lease program to ferry massive amounts of material to the Soviets on terms much more favorable than those extended to the UK. In fact, Tzouliadis writes that a US Army major, a Lend-Lease expediter and liaison officer with the Soviets during the war, testified in Congress in 1949, later published in book form, [George Macy Jordan, "From Major Jordan's Diaries" (Harcourt Brace & Co. 1952, Ch. 5 "The Black Suitcases"] that in 1943 he inspected a number of black suit cases sealed with red wax that the Russians were sending to Moscow by the hundreds and for which they claimed diplomatic status even though they had no connection with any embassy. The inspection took place in the Great Falls, Montana air base on an airplane about to leave for the Soviet Union. The officer there discovered a letter from "H.H." on White House stationery to a Soviet official enclosing engineering drawings and atomic bomb technical information that an unidentified person had obtained from General Groves, head of the Manhattan Project. FDR and most of his New Deal staffers brought to the US Government a mild brand of socialism that most believe America needed in the 1930's to fix the economic woes brought on by the Great Depression. But many of these government officials, including Roosevelt himself, allowed their deep-seated socialist beliefs and the success of the New Deal to carry them too far to the left. Some, like Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, went all the way to become Soviet agents. Others, like Harry Hopkins and Vice President Henry Wallace, stopped short of openly accepting Communism but became supporters and enablers of the Soviet Union and participants in its world-wide dissemination of propaganda and disinformation. No review of "The Forsaken" would be complete without the story of FDR's decision to send Vice President Henry Wallace on a goodwill mission to the Soviet Union in mid-1944. Wallace was accompanied on this tour by Owen Lattimore, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, who specialized in Chinese and Asian affairs, and was an outspoken supporter of Communism and the Soviet Union, and was instrumental in channeling US support to Mao Tse Tung's Communist forces in China. At the time of their tour, the Soviet Gulag was flourishing. The worst of the camps was in a region of Siberia known as Kolyma, which was an uninhabited area of extremes of climate and geography. Stalin established several camps in the Kolyma region to mine gold and other raw minerals. The starvation rations, extreme cold, harsh living conditions, and brutality of the KGB camp guards resulted in very short life spans for the unfortunate inmates. Kolyma was synonymous with a tortured and brutal death and the Gulag population regarded assignment to Kolyma as a simple death sentence. Wallace and Lattimore spent several days of their 1944 Asian tour in the Kolyma camps, which the Soviets had converted for the visit into Potemkin villages complete with KGB agents brought in to pose as well-fed and happy camp workers. Wallace and Lattimore marveled at how well the camps were run and how happy and well adjusted were the inmates. Their Soviet hosts entertained them with concerts given by "inmate" orchestras. After the visit, to the astonished delight of the Soviets, Wallace and Lattimore reported their favorable observations to Roosevelt and the American public, while the real inhabitants of the Kolyma camps continued to suffer horrible deaths. Interestingly, after the war when the ruse was made public, Wallace apologized to the American people for having been duped by the Soviets. But that did not stop him from running for president of the United States in 1948 as a third-party candidate, with the surreptitious backing of the Communist Party of the USA. All in all, "The Forsaken" brings an interesting new perspective to the sordid history of Soviet Communism and adds a uniquely American connection that is largely unknown. But the most important function of this excellent book is to bring to the world's attention the horrors of the Communist experiment in much the same way that Robert Conquest's "The Great Terror" (1968) and Martin Amis's "Koba The Dread" (2002) served to just tell the world what happened.

This is a part of history about the depression I never knew. I would have given it 5 stars but found it repetitive and definitely biased against America at times. We let these people down but at the time, we were not sure if they were willingly giving up their citizenship. It’s a cautionary tale of what happens when socialism takes over and very important as a warning.

This is a well written and interesting book about an almost unknown piece of history. This book needs to be read by each generation as there were so many mistakes that were made that can caused huge and horrific consequences. We need to know the warning signs to avoid this type of human disaster again.

This book is a must read for any Western Country citizen!! I gave it only 4 stars because it didn't tell you how exactly all these people thought when they went over there, most were communists or socialists already, they were duped and paid a terrible price. They tried to tell people here, those that got out but it was too outrageous to believe and that is why it is going to happen again but this time it will be worse. And don't think it can't or won't happen here in the US or the Soviet EU as the past Euro President from Check Slovakia called it already, when our government and banking institutions along with that of England, Germany and France supported this so called Bolshevik Revolution and Soviet Experiment back then. That was truly only an 'experiment' for what is coming as a Global Governance for this world. If one studies how it was brought in along with a person who lived during those times up to when it collapsed in 1989 & 1991 your eyes will then begin to be open to what is happening to us now and what is to come. Remember the Soviet Union Didn't collapse it went under ground and has subverted almost all governments around the world including the US. Think you want Socialism and Communism, then talk to someone who lived through it and listen to what happened to their families when it began and through it, then you'll most definitely sing a different tune. What occurred was so shocking and so difficult to believe and/or fathom is that not only did Stalin kill over 50 million of his own people, more than Hitler by far and Mao Se Tung too, but the shock is who helped that flailing and bankrupt Bolshevik/Soviet government stay alive and keep doing what it did up unto it's fall 70 years later. Those are the people who should be prosecuted and exposed and treated the same as they did to others. Finally, not all were innocent who went over to Russia during that time, men and women reap what they sow no matter how hard the reaping might be, some people never learn, I hope to be one that does and encourage others to quickly humble themselves and do the same. Time is short folks, and sticking your head in the ground or turning the other way thinking it will go away and won't happen here won't save you because it is coming.

Fantastic book. Frightening and you can see parts of it now. Of course the people who should read the book, won't. Well written, fantastically researched with a huge bibliography and sources.

This is a book that makes you think about humanity, how we are vulnerable, and why humans can be so cruel to one another. The author made me feel that in similar circumstances, I might have emigrated to the USSR, only to be caught in a lethal hell worse than imagined by Dante or Kafka. The only reason I give it 4 stars instead of five is that the author is so affected by the story, he is angry about things that may not deserve anger. To blame Roosevelt for keeping the price of gold high by buying Russian gold seems naive. Yes, by the US keeping the price of gold high, Stalin was able to prop up his government, and yes Soviet gold was mined by horribly treated political prisoners. But to condemn Roosevelt as party to the "Red Terror" lessens the incredible value of this book. Unfortunately, the author treats other participants of the time similarly. Hindsight is always 20-20. The section on the abandoned US soldiers was informative and likewise a tragic part of American history. Further proof of the randomness of evil. The book makes it is clear, if you believe that every man's death diminishes the whole of humanity, Stalin was as evil as they come. Highlights the danger of absolute belief.

This is the type of history book that I always look for; filling in a blank spot in knowledge, well-written and affecting. You can read the greater detail in other reviews, but the high-level story is the totalitarian savagery of the Soviet Union on almost everyone it could get its hands on. The second theme is the indifference and political expediency of the Roosevelt administration and its successors in not raising a finger to aid or protect any of the victims; in the immediate aftermath of WW2 it became a direct co-conspirator by shipping thousands of Russians to their deaths in the Soviet Gulag. There are also interesting tales of artists and newspaper reporters visiting from America who routinely chose to maintain their privileges in the Soviet Union at the expense of their American and Soviet friends dragged away in the middle of the night and never seen again. The moral of the story is that you should hope to be a person of compassion and principle rather than become the informer and the murderer; that could be difficult to do in a place like the Soviet Union.

Well written, well researched. Any author who shows up with forty pages of footnotes should be taken seriously. A topic that seems both relevant and troubling in an age where Americans appear hell bent on chucking aside over 225 years of constitutional protections. Imagine what Stalin could have done with the surveillance state and somnolent citizenry extant in the U.S. today. This is a tragic period that is virtually ignored by the American educational establishment, from secondary schools thru post graduate studies. Odd don't you think?

Whether or not you agree with the politics of the socialists that left America in the 1930's to find work in Soviet Russia (obviously not the best decision to leave America for the USSR), you will certainly be depressed by what happened to many American citizens in the USSR. Their passports were eventually confiscated when "Mother Russia" no longer needed their services, then many were shipped off to gulags. This book shows exactly how wicked and cold-hearted mankind can and ultimately will be in a socialistic society where each citizen is reduced to a producer. The lethargic response by our State Department to get them home was especially ridiculous. Considering there are many socialists in the news media and the American State Department (since the 1920's and 30's), this embarrassing episode in American history is one that is never mentioned in today's news for obvious reasons.

Born, raised and educated in USSR I was aware of the terror of 1937 and red Shalamov, Solzhenitsyn and others. But I had no idea about massive emigration from US to USSR and staggering number of Americans in GULAG. This book is a must read for anyone enamored with the socialist ideas

My grandfather was offered a position in Russia when he worked fo Ford during the depression. Fortunately, grandmother talked him out of it. This book documents a period of history that must not be forgotten.

Solid look into the ruthless Russian leaders. ALso damming history If our naive presidents and our embassy representatives. Most Interesting to me was some rationale for the new deal because Of reverse emigration to Russia because of the poor conditions in The U.S. At that time.

I feel some sorrow for those Americans who made their horrible decisions at the prompting of scores of well fed, lying journalists whose offspring are still with us today. . But what this book really does is give the lie to the general narrative American historians presented me as a high school/collage student, my fellow students, my children and my grand children. It supports the contentions of M. Stanton Evans, Diana West, Paul Kengore, Vadim Birstein, and so many others who have proven that Doris Kearns Goodwin and her ilk have spent their lifetimes polishing the image of FDR, who in all truth was the greatest stooge over to occupy the oval office. The composite of Tzouliadis' work and the now scores of other histories prove beyond doubt that espionage within the administration ran further up the line than even Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White. It ran straight to Harry Hopkins, who, along with several dozen others ought to be tried in absentia. That is the only way we will ever get to know our country and who we are. When these volumes are placed together with Bill O'Rielly's "Killing :Patton," and Whittaker Chamber's "Witness" the reader is left disappointed not only in the lack of character displayed by Harry Truman,but Dwight Eisenhower as well. .There may have been a great generation, but that great generation was founded solely on America's business and working people. That is, those who were held outside of the politically correct loop that formed just before FDR was inaugurated..

Wonderfully written with great command of KGB files and U.S. media and documents that show complicity by the media and U.S. officials in Stalin's terror. Americans who moved to Russia seeking the Communist paradise ended up being shot or died in the gulag, including their children.

This is a riviting book, and one that, once started, you don't want to put it down. I shows how the State Dept. didn't help the Americans who moved to Russia during the depression. They abandonded these people. It definitely is a tragedy, and one that all Americans need to know. I have bought many of these books and given them as gifts because I feel so strongly in educating the American people. It shows the strength of those who were determined to get out alive.

A great deep dive into this subject matter. For those who keep this era as a pet interest, a must-read. Goes far deeper into just the American ex-pat experience.

This book is a super book. It reveled Americans left the U.S. During the Great Depression, while the U.S. Government did little to protect our citizens. The book was wonderful, and made me make connections to immigrants. The author discusses the idea that the Soviet Union tried to force the American immigrants to force able adapt to soviet culture during Stalin's great terror.

Everything about this book is scary. I read it in it's entirety, and it's very unsettling. I am surprised and dismayed that this is the story of many of our American servicemen. It shouldn't be the story of ANY of our American servicemen, or any Americans at all, for that matter. So much for believing that America doesn't leave people behind. As for what it says about Soviet Russia, some of this was surprising some of it is not.

This is an amazing, unknown history of Stalin's and Stalinist Russia's, the USSR's interface with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 's Depression USA. It is shocking to think that America had sunk so low and continued to treat these American people as trash. Of course, the USSR was happy to make these people disappear in a number of ways. Everyone talks about the horrors of Hitler's Naziism but the horrors of Stalin's USSR are vast.

A Fabulous book! Every history student, no where they live, should be required to read this! It will blow your mind, curl your toes, make you sad, ill, disgusted with not only everything Russian (Stalin and his pals included), but make FDR look like a chump! He didnt know Stalin, and didn't bother to find out either. In the meantime Henry Ford made $40M in GOLD selling the Russians junk... I wont spoil it, read it!

I just have too say....I just finished "The Forsaken". It is about the american emigration of Americans to Russia during the depression. It later was about how Stalin swept them up in his "Terror" era and later purges. O.M.G. What a great book. I was so horrified, I could not stop reading. Stalin was MUCH worse than Hitler! Book states that Stalin was responsible for murdering 32 MILLION people during the 30's through the 50's. For anyone interested in Russian history, I HIGHLY recommend this book. Now, I feel ready to tackle "War and Peace" (I have been studying up on Russian history in preparation)

I read this for Book Club and is not a book I would normally choose. Many years ago in college I took Russian history and literature classes and have no recollection of this terrible time in history. The fact that so many Americans chose to immigrate to Russia was fascinating, but the author did a wonderful job of explaining why. Sometimes I had to force myself to keep reading as the personal accounts were so horrifying. It seemed that some parts were redundant, and I would quickly skim those. But the book was so well researched, and the truth of that time cannot be denied. I think this should be a must read for everyone.

The physical and mental images set forth in this book are still implanted in my head. The failed Ford plant, the gulag prisoner, (ex-American) who was kept alive by the treacherous inmates ONLY because he could mimic the guards and tell funny stories and that ability was the only brightness to the prisoners lives. Citizens of Russia walking down the street NOT making eye contact with others for fear of being "turned in" for no reason. The lying to the American people by their own diplomats. POWERFUL book.

After a steady buildup the tale drops into a horrific wide eyed cliff jump. It explains the communist's end game. So many murders. So much of this tale was new to me. Beside the nazi stories, the gulag history is silent. Did the soviets kill enough to suppress history, or are we wilfully ignorant. Do the young budding socialists know their history. Many won't, but the scary part is, many will.

This book is well written and very informative about the 1930's iand how the Great Depression in the US and the Revolution/Stalin era in the USSR interacted to result in tradegy for thousdand of Americans and millions of Russians. It illustrates how ignorance of world affairs, political motivation and neglect of basic principles can lead to great loss for innocent peopple.

I am so glad I read this as I learned so much that I had never heard before. It just made me sick at how many in our government knew what was happening, but they just turned a blind eye and filed the evidence away. Everyone should have to read this as we are doomed to repeat history when we don't know what has already happened in the past. In case you are interested, another good book that deals with one families story during this same time is called Dancing Under the Red Star by Karl Tobien. They were one family sent over by Henry Ford to help operate a manufacturing facility in Gorky, Russia.

Lo compre para un sobrino, por lo que le pedi que me indicara que deberia poner al hacer la revision. Segun el, este libro es muy bueno!

Well researched book about Americans who go to the USSR during the Depression to live in the worker's paradise. Not. Read this book and learn the truth about Communism in Stalinist USSR.

It’s a riveting history of a time about which few people know anything, which should be required reading for every high school student. Truly amazing.

Very informative and well written book following horrors and suffering American workers in the USSR after the 1930, no help from the US government.

This was a wonderful purchase. The book was exactly as described and arrived quickly. Highly recommend this seller!

Tragic story! Even this many years later, the tragedy seems so fresh. I'm not sure which government was worse...the government doing all the killing or the government that let all of the killing take place, especially to its own people. Hmm? This is a must read for everyone who believes in the freedoms of people around the world. We all need a fresh reminder of how important it is to keep all governments at bay because governments seem to have a very short memory and political parties will only serve themselves. The people get lazy and the government 'always' over steps it's bounds!

As an American, it's hard to comprehend the cruelty of so many of our forefathers hungry for power. At the same time, however, I am inspired by the bravery of the survivors who found the strength to recount those decades in Gulag imprisonment so the stories of their fallen comrades would be heard.

A somber and worthy book about the little-known American gulag prisoners during Stalin's reign of terror. A must-read if you're interested in the history of this era, or simply want a superbly written account of events you've never heard of.

Good condition

A very detailed but rarely died history of Stalin's dictatorship, with an emphasis on the Americans trapped in Soviet Russia. Yes you can argue their naivety led them down that path but remember it was a different time.

Great book and extremely well documented. Anyone who even had an inkling of support for communism should read this to realize the lies and violence required.

If you have illusions about what goes on in countries run by dictators and the heads of state in this country you need to read this book. Leadership heads are not the guys in the white haste you have been led to believe.

When the mainstream media (films, tv, networks) has bombarded us with how "terrible" and "silly" the American anti-communist movement has been, they are being dishonest, especially when the threat WAS there and truly evil. The NY Times, and our VP and President were dupes. Before historians evaluate the greatness of FDR, this book should be read. This is a MUST READ.

This book caught my attention due to the interesting story of the lost Americans. .but held my attention due to the great narrative on Statin’s terror - indeed the terror and death that comes to all communist states sooner or later.

This book is a remarkable account of some truly awful events. What's even worse is the culpability of the American diplomats who allowed these events to take place. It has certainly opened my eyes and changed my opinion of the persons in power at the time. The current administration should read these words and pay attention to the reactions of our so-called "friends" and how ridiculous they thought we were when we actually believed their rhetoric.

amazing book of tragic history. thanks for author for his job

One of the best books you will ever read on Stallin, USSR and the idiots of the US diplomatic corps in Russia who gleefully overlooked Stalin's evil deeds.

one of few books that points out that the U.S. & U.K. did not just overlook Stalin's horror but actively took party.They & Stalin judged the Germans.The winner always write history-also recommed "the Pawns of Yalta". Good old "IKE" did all he could to help Uncle Joe. G.I.s took part in helping _unwilling-remember that when we talk about how the Nazi soldiers had a moral obligation to refuse orders.Find a G.I. Joe or Tommy(British soldier) who did!!! From FDR to our ivy league state dept. to average G.I. Joe no one refused to go along. Jimmy Mack

This book is truely an example of historical writing at its BEST. Having previously read Margret Whetlin's "Fifty Russian Winters", my interest in this subject, American Emmigres to Russia, had already been piqued...and I was looking foward to Mr. Tzouliadis's book. This book did not disappoint. Meticulouly researched, The Forsaken is an engaging read that avoids the dull drab pitfalls of some histories and also avoids the melodrama of others. Once again, this book is one of the best examples of historical writing I have encountered...

wow, there are many stories here....I had heard, but did not know much of this history...now I know more.

Great book

I picked up this book for research for a class, but it reads almost like a novel. He paints a vivid picture of the experiences of these emigrants and I found it hard to put down but simultaneously difficult to read in one long stretch- some of the details of the gulags and the Terror in the late '30s are terrifying and it was emotionally wearing to read about it. The only criticism I have of this book is that he often mentions a name and thirty-odd pages later it comes up again and I'd have no idea of who that person was- an officer at the American embassy? A reporter? I don't remember. I'd have to go to the back to look up where I first read the name to find out who the person was. All in all a great book and I'll be reading it again. There's just too much to take in in one read.

Gripping history of a period many would prefer no one remembered. Heart wrenching at times. Well written and carefully researched.

This story -- of Americans desperate for work who relocated to Russia in the 1930s -- is heartbreaking. The writing is superb....gripping throughout.

A fascinating story of Americans who emigrated to the Soviet Union during the Stalinist terror and paid the price for their decision. An important work that helps illustrate this tragic part of European and world history.

I was not aware that Americans went to Russia for employment in the late Twenties and Thirties. The people were misled, and most of them never came back to the states again. This book dovetails with _Danger on the Train_.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book! A Must Read for every American. It gives me chills to read this book and reflect on the current events in America!!

I really liked this read.

Really a well done book that shows the terrors of Stalin's Soviet Union coupled with the complete indifference and incompetence of the US State Department and Pres. Roosevelt.

this is well written history of shameful acts of our govt & the horror of Stalin

For post war baby boomers that somehow believe in the virtue of government power over our lives, this is a must read book. Kind of knowing that Stalin was a dictator is not enough. His methods of terror have been learned and repeated, we must wonder can they happen here? Read it and you be the judge.

Should be required reading Have recommended it to several people and they all have thanked me and said (I had no idea this went on with our government ignoring calls and pleas for help from these Americans.

Very interesting. A part of history I knew little or nothing about.

The Forsaken is an extremely well written saga of the fate of a number of Americans who left to find work in Stalin's Russia during the Great Depression. It is a sad tale of disillusionment and betrayal by both Russian and US governments. While the book focuses on the fates of a few of the emigrants, it conveys a clear impression of the Soviet world in the 30s. This is book is both entertaining and enlightening. Highly recommended.

Heartbreaking story. Not enough written about this point in history.

I never knew this stuff. Shocking, informing, sobering. You'll say, "How did I not know this?" Will be your favorite book this year.

Very good book. Kind of an under-reported aspect of WWII. Shows have under-handed the American government officials could be. I would never have thought the US government would abandon so many Americans to Soviet concentration camps.

A must book for every American .

Amazing story that should be taught in schools today (I do!)

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.

Let's hope we learn from our past.

Everyone who wants to be a communist should read it, it will burst their bubble.

A subject about which I had never heard of.

Class requirement. Arrived in as expected condition.

A very well researched book. A little tedious where the story is told and retold from many different points of view, but it is an important bit of history to know about.

The book was unsettling yet fascinating history. I learned a lot and found it very engaging. Highly recommend.

Part of history that doesn't' get the publicity it deserves. Stalin sent so many to gulags, including Americans

Easy read. A combination of the history of oppression in Soviet Union from 1930 to 1991 when Soviet Union ended. Within this are the stories of a few suvivors and others who were lost. Well documented with original source documents from US archives and soviet recorde available after the fall.

Great

Good read. A period in American history when there was no work and Americans followed the hope of employment. Sadly, the hopes were short lived and the saga of so many individuals with no other resources is truly touching.

Ecxellent Book. Good perspective on what happened in that era. The author is easy to read and understand. I would recommend this book.

Great book covering a little known (or at least discussed) event. Well written and an easy read.

A must Read!

I learned almost everything there is to know about Stalin's Russia from this well-written riveting book. I'd never studied Stalin and didn't know much about him, but have learned an immense amount from this great book.

This book enlightened me to a slice of Soviet history I was unaware of. Very interesting & informative, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Very informative

Thank you for researching and writing this. Loved it.

A world history and American history not taught in school. This is case for ensuring history does not repeat itself.

Perfectly described and fast. Not much else to say but thank you very much and I recommend everyone read this book.

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.

A very important work that all Americans should be aware of.

The book was a gift, and the recipient received it very quickly and in the "new" condition as advertised. Thanks!

This is history that most of the Left Wing would like to keep hidden. It explains just how sympathy for the Communist tyrants began, and still continues today.It helps explain why we have Americans who today think that the Constitution is a greater threat than the terrorist and illegal immigration. McCarthy was the wrong man with the right message. I couldn't put it down once I started reading.

The dust jacket was ripped

I've studied Stalin and the Gulag system for 40 years and this book remains as the pinnacle of all books on this subject. It's a deeply depressing read, one that almost gives you nightmares when you sleep. The fact that Stalin's crimes are shockingly ignored today is baffling and despicable. All the ink is given to Hitler, whose crimes pale in comparison to the evil despot that was Joseph Stalin, Beria and their sadistic minions. This book details in graphic fashion the Gulag system, the massive killing pits, where NKVD officers casually fired bullets into the heads of millions upon million of Soviet citizens and any unfortunate foreigners who lived in the USSR. The author uncovers the shocking fact that in 1937 alone, 17 million citizens simply vanished. Most died in the Gulags, a few extremely hardy souls survived to tell the tale. The most harrowing portions of the book detail the infamous Kolyma Gulag where the temperatures reached -60 degrees and the prisoners wore little clothing. It's blasphemy that if you look up "Kolyma" you will get ridiculously low casualty figures, like "150,000," when the actual tally is in the millions. The journey of the prisoners to Kolyma is graphically described, from the packed cattle cars, the hellish and freezing ships with thousands of people trapped below deck in the holds: women raped until they died, prisoners attacking one another in murderous fury and guards tossing live bodies into the sea. This book is not for the faint of heart, it's an extremely depressing book, but one every literate person should read. The fact the American government did nothing as thousands of Americans were tortured and murdered in the Gulags remains a stain on the American government forevermore. A must read.

I am very pleased to have happened upon this book by a quick and vague reference in a Van Cliburn book I read earlier in the year. Unfortunately, however, this is a history book that should be much easier to find and at the top of the Western canon. It ranks with Solzhenitsyn in overall scope, and frames evil in the language that indoctrinated liberals giving their civilization away in Europe and the US are least familiar with hearing (and incapable of speaking). The book discusses economic tyranny outside the conventional realm of "Hitler is bad; let's not be Hitler". It shows Socialism as tyranny. It highlights the system of collectivism as murder, not depending on who is leading that system, when that system is lead, who supports that system or how indefatigably it can be supported. "The Forsaken" by Tim Tzouliadis shows Socialism not as a system that is good for subordinate people and bad for cosmopolitans, or good for impoverished illiterates and sometimes functional for high school graduates, bad for most or half or a few, good for anybody. Regardless of race, regardless of the Stock Market, regardless of the weather, no matter a culture's evolutionary position on God or Goethe: Socialism is murder, according to this book. How did the US ever get so involved with Stalinist Russia, and why did champagne sipping socialite ambassadors earn a paycheck while refusing to rectify the situation? The book is comprehensive. I don't know if reading it gets me angrier, or knowing that more people need to read it, a lot more, especially anybody with a right to vote. You should read this book. Witness Fred Beal, page 56. "[American Communist] Fred Beal had taken an unsupervised trip into the Ukrainian countryside. Walking through fields he stumbled upon fresh graves marked with crosses, and unburied bodies decomposing into the earth. As he continued walking, he noticed the starving Ukrainian peasants running away from him, evidently mistaking him for the GPU [State Political Directorate]. ... Beal had made a second trip .... By the side of the road the Massachusetts-born trade unionist came across a dead horse still harnessed to its wagon, and a dead man holding its reins in his hands. Walking into an empty village, Beal looked into a peasant hut and saw a dead man sitting by a stove." He saw written on a door, "God bless those who enter here, may they never suffer as we have." Enter Walter Duranty, a very useful idiot, who on page 60 is driving around Moscow in a new Buick with a GPU horn. Looking for kicks, this New York Times award-winning journalist and Stalin apologist extraordinaire honks the horn in the American style, to announce happy arrival, only to learn that after midnight, Russian citizens waited to be dragged from bed, arrested with no due process, and taken to the Gulag for even the rumors of offense against the state, often never to be heard from again. In addition to Isaac Babel, Dmitri Shostakovich faced arrest, this for a plot to assassinate Stalin. Instead, it was the police who would arrest him who were arrested. On page 117: "The Red Army officers who signed [Marshal] Tukhachevsky's death sentence were themselves executed, one by one, over the course of the year [1937]." Pavel Dybenko was shot after being a hero in John Reed's "Ten Days That Shook the World". That book, later as well, iis banned because Stalin wasn't in it. What begins (and is marketed as) a few Great Depression workers leaving the US for the promise of brotherhood and a better life is absorbed by the mechanisms of how their lives became unceremonious and anonymous death. Americans from Detroit or other locations would be said to have signed on as Soviet citizens, stripping the American Embassy or State Department of any recourse, giving the lie to the notion that Stalinism was a Utopia in direct proportion to how despotic it was. The greater the truth, the bigger the lie. Joseph Davies, along with the likes of Duranty and wife Marjorie Davies, not only ignored the truth but fed the lies. Reading about the second American Ambassador to the Soviet Union reminded me of people I overheard planning to vacation in Cuba because Obama had befriended the Castros. Higher in the government, and more systematically, page 206: "While Winston Churchill all but bankrupted the Bank of England to pay for American arms, Soviet Lend-Lease was funded on generous credit terms destined never to be repaid". While some Big 3 accounts make Churchill the odd wheel, Tzouliadis shows Churchill as the forward thinker. FDR is not overly obeisant in this account overall, but then there are Henry Wallace, who later apologized for being duped by Soviet idealism, and Harry Hopkins, who told the president, evidently, what he wanted to hear on page 203 and what was too low for the president to abide on page 275. Victor Kravchenko is an important figure to note on that page. The thread of this book does not prove to be baseball or Ford automobiles. The story of Thomas Sgovio is central to the history, but overshadowed by the Soviet brutality and the American negligence controlling his destiny. Victor Herman, who also wrote a memoir of his experiences, is also present, even when missing, throughout.

One of the best, most important books I've ever read. It should be required reading in all US classrooms to explain why we fought the Cold War and why we continue to fight for freedom today. Many people, some avowed communists, some just looking for work ventured to the "Worker's Paradise" the USSR during the Great Depression most never to be seen of or heard from again, worked to death in Stalin's gulags. All but abandoned by the US, their story is truly important, and a vivid lesson as to why we need to study history in order to not repeat it.

Joseph Stalin's extermination policy is dissected. Unlike Adolph Hitler, Stalin made no photographic or video evidence of his murderous regime. So the author, Tim Tzouliadis, took painstaking efforts at uncovering what this genocidal dictator accomplished. The figures aren't precise but on average it's thought that 26 million souls were slaughtered throughout the Terror Purge, along with 30 million folks (from numerous countries) who were forced into slave labor i.e. mining for gold in the gulags (death camps) of Siberia. Also detailed are the thousands of Americans who volunteered to become workers in Stalin's 'five year plan' in the early 1930's. Russia at that time provided meaningful work for the disenfranchised during the Great Depression. Most of these expatriates got caught up in the ensuing slaughter, circa 1935 -1941. The remaining Americans were forced into labor camps, which often times was its own death sentence. This eventually included: 130 sailors, taken as POW's during WWII, along with 8 - 10 Airmen who were shot down while flying their RB-29 during the Korean War. Their fate would find them languishing away in the gold and uranium mines of Siberia. It was thought that if the American government pushed for their repatriation that WWIII would erupt. So with little food or clothing, they were left to wither on the vine. One of the last chapters sheds light on the former KGB agent LtCol Vladimir Putin and his longing for the days of old, when the "Great Leader" Stalin ruled. Scary stuff!

No, not because this book is some kind of anti-Communist screed as some of the negative reviewers would have you believe. Be careful that you don't start reading until Friday night, because once you start, you won't be able to stop until you have finished, so you probably should read it over the course of a weekend. It's rather like a car wreck in that once things start happening, you won't be able to look away. I love this book. I have read it several times only because the story is so gripping. Like a Greek tragedy, the main characters are destroyed by their hubris. Convinced with the righteousness of their cause, they journey to a foreign land taking everything of value (and that includes their children sadly) only to find that their expected paradise turns into a hellish nightmare. This book should be read back to back with Douglas Smith's Former People, which details the systematic destruction of the Russian aristocracy in post-revolution society. Read Formal People first since the timeline begins with the Bolshevik takeover, and so precedes Forsaken (although Formal People covers the history of two royal families up into the 50s. Both of the books are painful and sad and deeply depressing, describing the lives of people caught in the maw of Stalin's meatgrinder with no way of escape.

'The Forsaken' should be a required read for every college and university as it paints in detail the results of a very dangerous ideology: socialism. Most students have very little understanding and knowledge of this as the "only" evil they are taught is fascism. Interestingly, much of the propaganda that Stalinist Russia used to attract Americans in the 1930's is very, very similar to today's progressive themes which should be of no surprise, seeing that Marxism is at the root of both. And like the bloody legacy of right-wing fascism, left-wing communism can be just as brutal and deadly given what occurred under Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. The Forsaken brings a first-hand account of this to life.

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.

It tells what at first glance might appear to be an ephemeral tale of Stalin's Russia but as it progresses it is clear that the story is one that is central to understanding the true nature of the Soviet state and one which should serve as a primer for any student wishing to get to the heart of the Stalin terror-state. The "Forsaken" are initially a small group of baseball playing US citizens who move and settle in the USSR to escape the Depression and work in a society they believed promised more than the capitalist USA in the 1930's. Many were Ford line workers and engineers who go to help set up Ford funded factories in the USSR. Indeed Henry Ford encouraged many to go (but is careful to keep them at arms length and deny any responsibility for them). Yet within a couple of years all goes wrong as they get caught up (as dangerous "spies") in the 1930s Terror. One by one they disappear and this is where their tragedy begins. Firstly they are clearly innocents caught in Stalin's and then the NKVD's paranoia. Siezed off the street, they are tortured, forced to confess then shot or sent to the Siberian Gulags to be worked to death and vanish without trace. Just like the anything up to 20 million other Soviets that Tzouliadis includes in the narrative. However what is especially appalling about these US victims is that they are disowned totally by the US. The first ambassador, the city millionaire Joseph Davies is taken in totally by Stalin, believing the accuracy of the show trials and convincing the US government of his sincerity. The Embassy ignores appeals for help (In fact it fails to even protect its own employees from disappearance) believing too easily the Soviet lie that all have voluntarily become USSR citizens and renounced their US when the truth was that upon arrival the US passports were taken "for processing" by the Soviets and never returned. One of its key figures in the 1930's is Kennan of the containment telegram fame. He also sees little point in pushing to help these US citizens, who are perceived by many in officialdom as pinks and reds linked to US unionism. Tzouliadis shows a key factor in running the worst, far eastern Gulags where many of the US ended up was the need to mine gold and a key driver behind this was the US need for gold. The irony for the Forsaken now being that they were loaded onto virtual slave ships built in the USA and worked with US supplied equipment and tools. Worst of all perhaps is the performance of the White House. FDR's Vice President Henry Wallace visits the Kolyma area in World War II where most Gulags were and is taken in by a Soviet charade to believe the camps are kindly, pioneering settlements (well fed NKVD men replaced the skeletal gulag workers for the visit). For me though the key disappointment was the apparent lame response of FDR himself to the tragedy of the US citizens and the failure to perceive the true nature of the Stalin regime (even given the need to have cordial relation for the duration of the world war). Apart from anything else this helps understanding of Churchills frustration with FDR-Stalin relations at the wartime meetings. Tzouliadis writes well and the book becomes a real page turner. He uses the Forsaken focus to allow for a wider survey of the process of arrest, horrendous Gulag conditions, execution and disappearance during not one but three waves of Terror including US troops siezed during and after World War II. He describes how the process came to an end of sorts, providing brief accounts of the outcome for the key figures described in the text. He outlines the key role today of Memorial, the Russian organisation which today helps uncover the secrets of the Terror. It is for these reasons that "The Forsaken" is a valuable addition to the work on Stalin's Russia. Perhaps it will also start to show a wider audience that Stalin was no better than Hitler, in all probability much worse, in creating a society that dehumanised its members and eliminated millions.

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.

One thing that struck me as a common theme about the Gulag system,was that Stalin did not trust anyone.When the gullible Americans came to the Soviet Union,they thought that their influence would set the policies of the young communist government.Stalin smelled a rat,and a bunch of them.When Stalin invited them in,he did not want American liberals,sitting in America,plotting his overthrow.What better way to monitor and then terminate these people!There were two main types of American ex-pats living in the Soviet Union.One,the christianized pagan workers ,who had become disillusioned by the American system ,with the Great Depression causing terrific pain and hardships.And two,the liberal jewish artists and idealists,who had become disassociated by the provincial homespun values of middle America.There were others ,who saw Russia as a Eu-topian land of equality and freedom.Another was the lofty Park Avenue socialites ,who saw the revolution as exiciting and a way to help the 'half world' people.Another group was the liberal christianized pagans,who saw the Soviet Union as a way to break the Vatican system,and spread the wealth and private property for all socialist labourers.Others were East Germans caught at the end of World War Two.And others were American soldiers,who had strayed beyond Soviet boundaries.Saddest story is perhaps that of Paul Robeson.The lead black entertainer/singer of the time.Eventhough,he was not interned within the Gulag system,he was viewed with suspicion,on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. No matter where these various people,many soviet sympathizers came from,it seems that they all suffered the same fate.When they made the faustian bargain ,with blind devotion to Josef Stalin,they made a pact with a brutal devil that would not be broken.The few who managed to escape Stalin's hell-camp ice-boxes,still had to look over their shoulders,in America.The CIA,FBI and the HUAC committee had files on these people.And even the KGB had operatives ,within Amerika,investigatng Gulag refugees and liberal political activities.Stalin killed four times the number of Nazi Holocaust victims.The soviets never recorded their atrocities on film and isolated geography hastened news from circulating around.Hitler rarely stayed up late,he was asleep mostly by nine-thirty and up by sunrise. Stalin burned the midnight oil,into the few hours of the morning.This book shows how devilishly clever Stalin was.Stalin was peasant superstitious and xenophobically distrusting of foreigners,bearing capitalist gifts and free advice on running his government.I wished the stories were more in depth and personal,rather than a vast array of glimpses of tragic characters.

This book starts off slow, but picks up the pace and then becomes difficult to put down. Tzouliades has written a well researched book on an unusual and until now almost entirely neglected subject: American emigrants to Soviet Russia, American POWs unlucky enough to wind up in Soviet hands, and their collective descent into hell. The author weaves together important information about Stalin's Soviet Union and the U.S. Government's curious and unforgivable detachment and uncaring attitude about its own citizens. Revealed in this chilling story are the depths of human depravity and evil (e.g., Stalin's and his henchmen's), boundless greed and duplicity (e.g., Walter Duranty's), and stupidity, laziness, incompetence and naivete (e.g., Vice President Wallace and Ambassador Davies). The unfortunate Americans who are the subject of this tragic tale represent but a minute sliver of the decades-long panorama of Stalin's ghastly horror show, which makes Hitler's operations look like amateur hour. Even today, Stalin's role as perhaps the most depraved criminal of the past five centuries remains largely unacknowledged and unappreciated. Putin has helped rehabilitate Stalin in recent years to such an extent that 54% of Russians now have a "high opinion" of Stalin's "leadership qualities" (according to the Russian state-run polling agency VTsIOM). In this modern era, Stalin -- the devil incarnate -- continues to get away with murder.

...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.

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!!

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.

This is the most important book I have read in some time. I say this with no exaggeration or hyperbole. It has been some time since I read a book that has opened my eyes to a world of which I was completely unaware. I won't reiterate the book's contents, there are plenty of reviews here that will do that. I'll just tell you my opinion. When I was a teenager, I got a copy of "Deathbird Stories" by Harlan Ellison. That was really the first book that hit me in a physical way. I remember my heart racing, getting agitated and uncomforable reading that high-impact stuff. This book affected me the same way. There is a chapter that covers the torture techniques of Stalin's secret police, and be warned that it is not for the faint of stomach. You will squirm as I did. The rest of the book is not much better. It is an unrelenting recitation of purges, torture, transport in subhuman conditions, starvation, cold, frostbite, suffering, and death. Stalin emerged to me, not as a person, rather a grotesque personification of pure evil in human form. On the American side, a combination of lukewarm concern and downright stupidity sealed the fate of the Americans in the gulag. In spite of all that, there are some tiny miracles in here. Two Americans survived the gulags to return home. But for those two, out of the possibly 20 million (!) who were sent there, we may never know that anything ever happened in that faraway frozen corner of the world. "Siberia" is sort of an abstraction to us, a euphemism that means 'far' or 'middle of nowhere.' This book makes it come alive in all its terribly unforgiving nature. One small complaint. The last chapter is a long recitation of maudlin advice to never forget those who died. The author does make a good point at the end that forced labor camps are probably very much still alive, though now in China and North Korea, if not Russia. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Gird thy loins for a journey that is quite horrific, but well worth it.

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.

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.

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.