Book description
Of all the great movements of population to and from the United States,
the least heralded is the migration, in the depths of the Depression of
the nineteen-thirties, of thousands of men, women and children to
Stalin's Russia. Where capitalism had failed them, Communism promised
dignity for the working man, racial equality, and honest labour. What in
fact awaited them, however, was the most monstrous betrayal. In a
remarkable piece of historical investigation that spans seven decades of
political change, Tim Tzouliadis follows these thousands from Pittsburgh
and Detroit and Los Angeles, as their numbers dwindle on their epic and
terrible journey. Through official records, memoirs, newspaper reports
and interviews he searches the most closely guarded archive in modern
history to reconstruct their story - one of honesty, vitality and
idealism brought up against the brutal machinery of repression. His
account exposes the self-serving American diplomats who refused their
countrymen sanctuary, it analyses international relations and economic
causes but also finds space to retrieve individual acts of kindness and
self-sacrifice. Tim Tzouliadis is a writer and filmmaker. Born in
1968, he read philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, and went on
to pursue a career in television current affairs and documentary-making
for Channel 4, BBC2, NBC and National Geographic Television.
