Part one of the review of this book describes how thousands of Americans immigrated to Russia during the Great Depression to find jobs in the “Worker’s Paradise.” They were treated well in the early days, but the Soviets began to arrest and imprison them along with all other nationalities, including Russians, when the Terror began. Part two of the review describes the Gulags and the brutal treatment of millions of people. Few survived. The United States government seldom did anything to help any Americans who were desperate to escape. The official policy was to never do anything that would cause embarrassment to “Uncle Joe,” which is what Roosevelt called Stalin.

Roosevelt was forced to deny Stalin’s request to return one defector who was stirring up negative publicity about what was happening in the Soviet Union. The defector, Victor Kravchenko had attracted international attention. Both  Ambassador Joseph Davies and Harry Hopkins advised Roosevelt to return Kravchenko. Hopkins argued that no one would know what happened to Kravchenko if he were returned, but Roosevelt sensed a political disaster in the making and refused the extradition. Kravchenko published “I Choose Freedom,” describing Stalin’s crimes, and was tried for libel in France after an onslaught of furious attacks from Soviet critics. Kravchenko won a token one franc award, but there continued to be a “…willingness to deny the truth of what was ongoing in the Soviet Union.” Kravcheenko repeatedly claimed Soviet agents were trying to kill him and was eventually found dead of what was declared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Manhattan apartment.

Stalin wasn’t finished with the Terror at the end of WWII. He obtained an agreement from both Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta that all Soviet prisoners of war would be repatriated to the Soviet Union “…without exception and by force if necessary…” Stalin publicly warned that “…in Hitler’s camps there are no Russian prisoners of war, only Russian traitors and we shall do away with them when the war is over.” The prisoners being prepared for return were given leaflets “…showing a beautiful Russian woman stretching out her arms and saying, ‘Come home, dearest son, your motherland calls you’.” The returned POWs were immediately stripped, given striped prison pajamas, and shipped to the Gulag. Some Russian being prepared to be shipped from Fort Dix New Jersey expected what would happen on their return and rioted to resist. Rifle fire, tear gas, and clubs had to be used to quell the riot. Some chose suicide over return to the Soviet Union.

The Venona Project revealed the massive extent of Soviet espionage against the United States during WWII, and confirmed Whittaker Chambers’s charges against Alger Hiss. Adolf Berle had told Roosevelt’s about the charges against Hiss in 1939. However, Hiss continued to be a senior member of the State Department, and travelled to Yalta with Roosevelt as his leading strategist. The evidence from Venona went beyond the Chambers charges and revealed Hiss to be a Soviet spy.

Major Robert Jordan testified to Congress in 1949 that he had seen cases in a plane bound for the Soviet Union. The cases contained information about the Manhattan Project and Oak Ridge and a letter from Harry Hopkins including a statement, “…had a hell of a time getting these away from Groves.” Jordan also testified that Hopkins had authorized uranium to be shipped to the USSR “off the records” through Lend-Lease. KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky revealed after the war that he had heard Harry Hopkins (senior advisor to FDR) to be identified as the “most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States.” (Emphasis added)

There are details of Americans in Italian and German prisoner of war camps who were shipped to the Gulags in the Soviet Union. Roosevelt had made numerous appeals to Stalin to release American prisoners of war from Poland. He wrote, “This government has done everything to meet each of your requests. I now request you to meet mine in this particular matter.” Stalin replied that he lacked the authority to meet the request. The Soviets considered the Americans to have been won as “spoils of war.” Soldiers of virtually every nationality in the war disappeared into the Gulags. There were 3.5 million Germans captured by the Soviets, and only 2.0 million of those were even accounted for. “Of 93,000 German soldiers marched through Moscow in a propaganda display…only 6,000 returned home.”

Dictator Kim Il-Sung visited Moscow in 1950 and told Stalin North Korea wasn’t ready to launch an invasion of the South. Stalin told him, “They were ready to start fighting and couldn’t wait.” North Korean forces armed with Soviet equipment and Soviet air support launched their invasion June 25, 1950 four months after the meeting. American pilots would report they recognized Russians in Chinese uniforms flying MiG fighters over Korea.

The Soviets began sending signals they were preparing to begin WWIII. Soviet consulates in the U.S. were closed, Soviet bullion funds were removed, and the Soviet Fourteenth Landing Army gathered on a peninsula across from Alaska. Truman addressed the nation on the threat of nuclear war on May 7, 1951. U.S. embassy workers planned to destroy their files with thermite grenades (which were designed to burn through the drawers of safes). They were warned the Soviets intended to imprison them “to try and dissuade U.S. Air Forces from attacking Moscow with nuclear weapons.” There is no discussion of what caused Stalin to forgo an attack.

Reports of American prisoners captured in Korea arriving in the Gulags began to surface from several sources. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles publically referred to American prisoners in the Soviet Union. Stalin armed the sixty Chinese divisions that would later attack in Korea, and he suggested that the Chinese should retain 20 percent of American prisoners.

Things in the world changed when Stalin died March 5, 1953. He was reported to have been felled by a stroke, but other stories indicated he was poisoned. Lavrenty Beria was ready to step in and continue Stalin’s policies, but he was arrested, tried, and executed by the Central Committee led by Nikita Khrushchev. What didn’t change was the fate of American prisoners. The Red Cross decided in 1956 to not raise the issue of Americans being held in the USSR. On February 25, 1956 Khrushchev made a four-hour speech listing and denouncing Stalin’s crimes. However, it wasn’t until 1992 that Boris Yeltsin admitted all the Soviet leaders before him had known about American prisoners and kept it a secret. He then ordered Stalin’s personal archives to remain closed for forty years, and American investigators were mostly unable to find evidence that could lead them to the fate or possible location of prisoners.

Many of the current residents of Siberia are the children and grandchildren of survivors from the Gulag. There were a very few Americans who survived the Gulag and made it back to the U.S. Thomas Sgovio made it to Buffalo, married and raised a family, and retired in Phoenix. He eagerly granted interviews to journalists or documentary filmmakers who learned of him. He often would say that God spared him to tell the story. “We always said, if any of us survived, we would tell the world about Kolyma…I have kept my promise.” Perhaps unfortunately he was shown his NKVD file that revealed the friend who had betrayed him. He has to be admired for the fact that he had the strength to survive the Gulag. The strength of his character is endorsed by his magnanimous reply (considering the years of torture he experienced). “It was a frightening time for everyone.”