Posted by Tina
Find Ronald Radoshs review of a new book In the Nightmare, by Tim Tzouliadis over at National Review online:
* What Tzouliadis offers is a dramatic account of the previously unknown story of the thousands of American citizens who, during the Depression, sought employment and a better future in the workers paradise built by the Russian Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution.*
*All kinds of Americans joined the exodus. Some of them were ethnic American Communists or fellow-travelers who wanted to help build socialism. The majority, however, were average Americans who could not help but be tempted by the offers coming from Moscow: Skilled workers were promised paid passage, jobs at high pay, paid vacations, and free medical care. When the Soviet agency Amtorg advertised for help in American papers in 1931, they got over 100,000 applications for slightly over 10,000 advertised jobs. The flood of immigrants included not only steelworkers and auto-assembly-line workers (including Walter and Victor Reuther) but also teachers, clerical workers, dentists, and doctors. *** Unlike political pilgrims who visited Communist countries, took Potemkin tours, and then reported back to their countrymen the great accomplishments they had witnessed the American migrants to the Soviet Union learned the bitter truth soon after their arrival. There they found not a workers paradise, but near-starvation standards of living, lack of adequate or even slightly decent housing, and little to purchase with the meager funds they were actually paid. When they arrived in the Soviet Union, the Americans were asked to temporarily give up their passports. Realizing their mistake and seeking to return to the United States, they were told they were now Soviet citizens subject exclusively to Soviet law, and were not free to come home.*