The Forsaken, an American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia—Part III

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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. Continue reading →

Tooth Fairy

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I am well aware of the tooth fairy tradition, because we have grandchildren ranging in age from five to twelve. Straight Dope observes that teething rituals date to ancient times when witches were thought to use pieces of the body to cast curses. There were differing methods of preventing this. Some cultures threw the tooth up to the sun, threw it over a roof, or it could be fed to an animal such as a mouse. The tooth  sometimes also could be buried, hidden, swallowed or burned. The reason a mouse (or perhaps a rat) was fed the tooth was the belief that the new teeth coming in would resemble those of the animal, and the teeth of mice were considered to strong and sharp. There was a French fairy tale about a “tooth mouse,” and that might have been the origin. The tooth fairy exchanging the lost tooth for something of value didn’t become fashionable until the early 1900s. Esther Arnold wrote a play called The Tooth Fairy in 1927 and Lee Rogow published a children’s story called The Tooth Fairy in 1949. The tooth fairy typically left a dime in the 1950s and two dollars by the 1990s. In my experience inflation must have really kicked in since then.

I think my favorite part of the write up in Straight Dope (proving, I expect, how easily I am entertained) is the ending. “And that’s the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth.”

Current Events in Russia

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I am posting a multipart review of the book “The Forsaken, An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia” by Tim Tzouliadis that I recommend, and I decided I should do some research on what is happening in Russia today. Much of my reading of history tells me that Stalin’s Soviet Union was preparing to take on the United States as an enemy as we were supposed to be allies during World War II. Reading about current events in Russia leads me to the opinion that the Russians do not consider us to be an ally despite the efforts of the Obama administration to establish better relationships with them. Hillary Clinton famously delivered a “reset button” to Russia, but the televised event was embarrassing. The Russian word “Peregruzka” that was written on the button  means “overcharged” and not “reset.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergi Lavrov informed her of the error. Perezagruzka (with an extra “za”) means reset, and peregruzka means over charged.

Recent events in Russia indicate that dealing with the Russians is likely to get tougher. A Washington Post article by Will Englund and Kathy Lally reports that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will step aside after his one term as president and has called on the ruling United Russia part to endorse Vladimir Putin for the post. The Huffington Post writes that Medvedev will be awarded the position of Prime Minster, the number two position in the Russian government, while Putin will undoubtedly be elected President in a carefully controlled election. Putin was former president Boris Yeltsin’s choice to succeed him when Yeltsin resigned the presidency in 2000. Putin then engineered Medvedev’s election in 2008 when term limits wouldn’t allow him to continue. The recent announcement means that the “managed democracy” policies that have been in effect since Yeltsin’s resignation will be continued in Russia.

Political freedom is not expected to return after Putin and Medvedev trade positions.  Opposition groups are rarely given approval to hold rallies, and unsanctioned gatherings are quickly broken up by police. The major television channels are controlled by the state and rarely air opposition views. It is to Putin’s advantage that he is credited with the Russian turnaround from post-Soviet poverty to prosperity, although much of that economic success comes from higher prices for oil and natural gas. Some analysts think Putin will have to pursue reforms to move beyond a natural-resources economy. Putin believes wealthier Russians need to pay higher taxes. He has called for increases in consumption and real estate taxes.

Putin does have political opponents. Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has predicted that the government will fall after Putin returns to the presidency. “This government’s collapse is predictable and inevitable. This won’t take six or five years or the period of time until the next parliamentary elections.”

Putin is expected to continue the strict nationalistic stance that has been his signature from his days with the KGB and though his years as President and Prime Minster. His return to the presidency isn’t likely to ease relations with the United States. There are disputes over the building of a European missile-defense system, economic policies, and Russian support of Syria and Iran. According to an article by Joel Brinkley, Russia continues to sell arms to the Syrian government as protestors are being killed. The Syrian President, al-Assad Alawite is a Shiite Muslim, while three-quarters of Syria’s people are Sunnis. Ending his reign would probably result in a Sunni leader, which would isolate Iran’s Shiite leaders and the terrorist allies, Hezbollah and Hamas. Perhaps the Russian support to Syria and Iran is the reason the Obama administration seemed much less eager to file official protests about the treatment of protestors in Syria than they were in other Middle Eastern counties. I know foreign relations are incredibly complex, but I don’t believe that we should hold out hope that Vladimir Putin is going to become our friend.

The Forsaken, An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia—Part II

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This is the second part of the review of the book by Tim Tzouliadis. My objective to posting book reviews is to give readers sufficient information to decide whether to read the book. I recommend this book, and the new book cost at Amazon is discounted.

Part I was about the massive immigration of Americans to the Soviet Union during the Great Depression and the beginning of the Terror in which Americans and all other nationalities, including Russians, were arrested and either executed or sentenced to slave labor in the Gulags. This part is about the Gulags and how Roosevelt and Churchill ignored the evidence of massive crimes against humanity by Stalin to justify support of their new ally against the Germans.  Reading the many descriptions of individuals being tortured made me wonder how anyone could have done what was described to another person and how the person being tortured could have held up to such treatments. Victor Herman, an American Jew, was punched in his back over his kidneys day after day while being exhorted to confess. On the fifteenth day he “…began bleeding from his penis, his rectum, his nose, and his eyes.” On the fifty-third night he was told he would be released if he only signed a list of names. He refused and was beaten by a gang with clubs. He was shocked into consciousness by the smell of his leg being burned. Believing he was about to die, Victor Herman spat in his torturers face. He woke up in the prison hospital and was sentenced to work in the Kolyma gold fields in Siberia where few prisoners survived for more than a few weeks. He served out his sentence, was released, built a house out of permafrost, married, and fathered a daughter who begged to be told stories about America.

Not all arrested were tortured. Millions were transported in NKVD prison trains with 70 packed into each car. Those who survived the trip would usually be quickly worked and starved to death in the Gulag. Walter Duranty wrote in the New York Times about “…thirty or forty thousand killed” in the Terror, which understated the number of deaths by about a factor of about a hundred. The Soviet Union’s own statisticians unwittingly revealed the truth about the Terror. One Soviet census was reported at 159 million instead of the expected 176 million. Stalin had the statisticians that had compiled the census executed. Continue reading →

Fire in the Hole

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A grandson asked about the origin of this expression, because he apparently has heard it often on the Military Channel. The Word Detective appeals that the phase not be shouted as a silly prank and the serious history of the expression begs that it only be used when appropriate. Underground coal miners have used the expression as a warning of a planned detonation since early in the twentieth century, and mining laws of several states require the warning. Military bomb disposal teams adopted the expression in the 1940s, and it continues to be used by the military to warn that a detonation is about to occur.

Forsaken, An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia—Part I

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This book by Tim Tzouliadis gave me at least a partial answer to my puzzlement over the years why some Americans were taken in by Soviet propaganda and some were even willing to serve as Soviet spies. I hadn’t known before reading the book that thousands of Americans immigrated to the Soviet Union in the 1930s to escape the oppression of the Great Depression and to take part in the “Worker’s Paradise.” They are described as being mostly ordinary citizens in search of what they had been told was a better life. Many entire families immigrated. The early years seem to have gone more or less well for most of them. By the late 1930s most of them had been arrested and shot or died in the Gulags. Very few managed to escape back to America.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been elected President in a landslide and began to launch the New Deal. He said in his inaugural address that “The moneychangers have fled from their high seats in the temple…,” and “The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.” The author observed Americans couldn’t be blamed for being drawn to Russia if the President could make such a speech without being called a “Red.” Moscow-based New York Times reporter Walter Duranty wrote in early 1931 of “…the greatest wave of immigration in modern history…” One writer observed that “broke Americans” unable to afford transportation to Russia could wait for winter and “…walk from Alaska to Siberia over the ice of the Bering Straits…” George Bernard Shaw broadcast a lecture after visiting the USSR saying Americans should want to go to Russia to escape “…our bankrupt Capitalism…” There were as many as 150 Americans arriving in Moscow a day by the end of 1931. Anna Louise Strong, a progressive friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and frequent visitor to Moscow, was giving glowing reports about Soviet progress to FDR. Continue reading →