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Stalin killed more of his countrymen than the Germans did, far exceeding the Holocaust. But there was no lack of willing hands to do the work. NKVD staff numbered 365,839 in 1939. That is an awful lot of torturers, executioners and their assistants. Their successors have lived on as the KGB, now the SSB. They did not act simply from fear of Stalin. And the names Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya are modern-day reminders that murder as a political act is still a Russian specialty. The Fate of Americans who Emigrated to Stalinist Russia May 24, 2009 forsaken.jpgTHE FORSAKEN: HOPE AND BETRAYAL IN STALIN'S RUSSIA By Tom Tzouliadis (Little, Brown Review By Peter Lewis The <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-1036283/Depression-blues-got- lot-worse-Gulag.html> Mail--- July 2008 Shock. Horror. For once these reactions can be volunteered without a trace of irony. This is, literally, an appalling book, one to shudder at. It turns the spotlight on a page of Soviet history that has been ignored until now. It explores the fate of American citizens who emigrated to Russia in the 1930s. They were victims of the Depression -- America had 19 million unemployed, and they were sick of queuing for handouts at soup kitchens. They had touching faith in the Communist revolution's promised land. They left home for the prospect of work under Russia's Five-Year Plan. They emigrated in hundreds, maybe thousands -- not just factory workers, but teachers, doctors, artists. Only a handful ever returned. At first, all went swimmingly. The work and wages were there. There were enough of them to support their own newspaper, the Moscow News, and to turn out baseball teams to play in Gorky Park. In Nizhni Novgorod, then renamed Gorky, Henry Ford no less was building an automobile factory with a workers' city alongside. He was well-rewarded for it -- 40 million U.S. dollars paid in gold. No one did more business with Stalin than Ford. 'We respect American efficiency in everything,' said Stalin. In 1933, America installed diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia, and President Roosevelt signed documents apparently guaranteeing U.S. citizens their rights to liberty and free speech in their adopted homeland. So it went until Stalin denounced 'saboteurs, divisionists and spies', signaling the start of the Terror at the end of 1934. Americans, who could be automatically put in these categories, began to disappear, along with other 'enemies of the people' seized by the secret police, the NKVD, in the small hours of the morning. Many were peremptorily shot. Others lingered in jail, before being sent to the camps of the Gulag. Those who wanted to go home found that they had walked into Catch 22. Being promised 'dual nationality', they had surrendered their American passports, which were never returned. Instead, they were deemed Soviet citizens. When they besieged the American Embassy, they were told nothing could be done to help them because they were no longer Americans. Tim Tzouliadis has shown great energy and initiative in tracking down what happened to some of these people through Russian archives, obscure memoirs, reports and interviews with survivors' relatives. These are stories of unrelieved cruelty and misery. Two in particular, Thomas Sgovio and Victor Herman, survived 16 years in the camps and eventually made it home to America, where they published little-known, first-hand accounts of the treatment of themselves and their friends, almost all of whom had perished. Thanks to Sgovio, we are introduced to the Kolyma camps, hitherto a symbol of the Gulag at its worst in the farthermost north-eastern corner of Siberia, where temperatures dropped below -50F, colder than at the North Pole. Kolyma's mines, operated by skeletal and ill-clad prisoners, produced 80,000kg of refined gold annually which underpinned Stalin's economy. Almost every kilogram cost a human life. Labour was supplied by a fleet of old tramp steamers sailing north from Vladivostok, crammed with replacement prisoners. The camp doctor welcomed them with the words: 'You are not brought here to live, but to suffer and die. If you live, it means you worked less or ate more than your due.' Few lasted more than a year. American Vice-President Henry Wallace, a great exponent of the brotherhood of man, paid an official visit to Kolyma. The watchtowers disappeared, the starving inmates were hidden. He met young, husky miners -- NKVD guards dressed up as 'volunteers'. He was most favourably impressed. One of the shocks in this book is the naive and supine behaviour of U.S. officialdom from the President down. U.S. ambassador Joseph Davies attended the Moscow show trials of Stalin's rivals and believed every word of the confessions from the tortured victims. He and his staff ignored the pleas to help their fellow countrymen escape, or the letters from American families wanting to know what had happened to those who had disappeared. U.S. newspaper correspondents failed to report their plight. Henry Ford said not a word. Roosevelt ignored what he was told, not wanting to upset Stalin, who ran rings round him. American troops captured in Korea were added to the Gulag. At last, in 1950, the State Department admitted the 'repression' of U.S. citizens trapped in the Soviet Union, estimated at 2,000. No releases were ever achieved. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a joint commission has been investigating American prisoners -- so far without result. The relevant NKVD archives remain closed. Kolyma has returned to frozen wilderness. There is no one left there except its victims, hundreds of thousands of them in mass graves preserved in permafrost. Although familiar with the Gulag literature from Solzhenitsyn onwards, I found some of these pages impossible to read without pain, anger and astonishment. The author has done a superb job in telling this black tale with authority, sympathy and well-justified anger at those who, like Roosevelt, Wallace, the State Department and its minions, did nothing for the forsaken, preferring a quiet life. Stalin killed more of his countrymen than the Germans did, far exceeding the Holocaust. But there was no lack of willing hands to do the work. NKVD staff numbered 365,839 in 1939. That is an awful lot of torturers, executioners and their assistants. Their successors have lived on as the KGB, now the SSB. They did not act simply from fear of Stalin. And the names Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya are modern-day reminders that murder as a political act is still a Russian specialty. *** exposing the hidden truth for further educational research only *** CAVEAT LECTOR *** In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. NOTE: Some links may require cut and paste into your Internet Browser. Please check <http://tinyurl.com/33c9yr> http://tinyurl.com/33c9yr for more real news posts and support the truth! (sorry but don't have time to email all posts) free book download: <http://www.lulu.com/content/165077> http://www.lulu.com/content/165077 *** Revealing the hidden Truth For Educational & Further Research Purposes only. *** NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security Agency (NSA) may have read emails without warning, warrant, or notice. 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