Recommendations from our site
“Its subject is those former American citizens who were made to give up American citizenship in exchange for Soviet citizenship. There’s this group of people who arrived from America which consisted of two types. The first were people who came for ideological reasons, who had socialist or communist views and who wanted to take part in the construction of socialism. These people, of course, quite willingly took Soviet citizenship and gave up their American passports. But the second group were victims of the Great Depression who came to Russia to find jobs and support their families. For them it was different. The Soviet authorities used all sorts of tricks to get them to take up citizenship. They were told that they had to hand over their American passports temporarily, and they never saw them again. And then they lost any rights that American citizens have or legal grounds to be protected. It was a great tragedy.” Read more...
Lyuba Vinogradova, Historian
“This is a fairly recent book which is wonderful and very depressing. It is an account of a large number of Americans who were living in Russia in the 1930s. Many of them had gone there to work. Others had been taken by their parents who had wanted to help build socialism. And many of these people were caught up in the purge trials and hundreds of them were killed. Tzouliadis oriented his book around a number of young American boys who organised baseball teams in Moscow and who used to play in the local parks. And he traces the fate of what happened to those young baseball players.” Read more...
The best books on Communism in America
Harvey Klehr, Political Scientist
