Fate of American Migrants to the Soviet Union

For John, BLUF:  Short answer—they didn't like the outcome.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The BBC has an interesting spin on the Soviet 1930s Great Purge, about which the article linked says:

Vladimir Putin was recently quoted as saying that Russians have nothing to be ashamed of concerning the Terror.

Of course not.  It was all those people surrounding Joseph Stalin.

The article, "Nightmare in the workers paradise", is a puff piece for Author Tim Tzouliadis' new book, The Forsaken:  An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia.

That said, the article is important, especially for those Progressives who think about the wonders of Socialism.  For every Norway, Sweden and Denmark, there is a Soviet Union, a People's Republic of China, a Pol Pot Cambodia, a Hugo Chavez Venezuela.

The sub-headline is "It was the least heralded migration in American history."  And if you read up on it you will understand why.

Here is the lede.

At the height of the Depression, several thousand American emigrants left New York on the decks of passenger liners waving goodbye to the Statue of Liberty, bound for Leningrad.

And they didn't come back.  Even the US Embassy in Moscow didn't, couldn't, help those emigrants.  Many were executed by the Soviet security services and many others were sent to work in Siberia, in the the Gulag Archipelago, as Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn named it.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff