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Foreign Workers in Soviet Russia, 1920–40: Their Experience and Their Legacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Andrea Graziosi
Andrea Graziosi
Affiliation:
Università di Napoli
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International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 33 , Spring 1988 , pp. 38 - 59
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Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1988

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References

NOTES

The Comitato per le Scienze Economiche of the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and the Italian Ministero della Pubblica Isturzione finance the research project of which this study is part. I would like to thank them, as well as Patrick Fridenson and David Montgomery, as well as the Bibliotheque de Documentation International Contemporaine.

1. After the war Greek refugees also came. See Yannakakis, I., “Dimitris Vlandas, 1908–1985,” Materiaux pour I' histoire de notre temps 6 (04–06 1986): 23–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. See the national and regional volumes of the Industrializatsiia series; the histories of factories and cities, such as Iz istorii magnitogorskogo metallurgichesckogo kombinata i goroda Magnitogorska, 1929–1941 gg (Iuzhno-Ural'skoe knizhnoe Izd., 1965); and autobiographies such as Goudov, , Le destin d'un ouvrier soviétique, 1934–1972 (Moscow, 1978).Google Scholar For Western scholarship, see Lewin, M., The Making of the Soviet System (New York, 1985)Google Scholar; L'industrialisation de l'urss dans les années Trente, ed. Bettelheim, C. (Paris, 1982).Google Scholar

3. Tarle, G. Ia., Druz'ia strany sovetov (Moscow, 1968), 36, 57, 63.Google Scholar See also his “Stranitsy istorii proletarskoi solidarnosti,” Voprosy Istorii 7 (1963), and his survey of Soviet research on foreign workers in Istoricheskie zapiski 98 (1977).

4. Their biographies give an idea of the Russian-American “connection.” Shatov (1887–1943), an IWW member in the U.S., served in the 1930s as head of the Central Board of Railroad Construction. Krasnoshchekov (1880–1937) held important positions as Chairman of the Far Eastern Republic, Deputy Commissar of Finance, chief executive of the Industrial Bank, member of the VSNKh presidium, etc., before being eliminated during the great purges. Melnichansky (1886–1937) was a steelworker and a member of the Odessa soviet in 1905 and a Socialist party member in the U.S. He was to be the chairman of Moscow Trade Unions Council and the president of the textile workers' union first, and a member of the Gosplan presidium and of the RKI collegium later on. He too perished in 1937. Stepan S. Dybets, an anarchist who had been a Wobbly in the U.S., was, along with Mayer, another returnee, the head of the Soviet auto industry in the 1930s. See Berkman, A., The Bolshevik Myth, Diary 1920–22 (London, 1925)Google Scholar; Goldman, E., Living My Life (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia; Barmine, A., One Who Survived (New York, 1945), 242Google Scholar; Bek, A., Takova dolzhnost' (Moscow, 1973), 27–158.Google Scholar

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8. Rybinskii, M.I., Tarle, G. Ia., “O pomoshchi trudiashchikhsia zarubezhnik stran sovetskomu sel'skomu khoziaistvu, 1921–1925 gg,” Istoricheskii Arkhiv 4 (1961)Google Scholar; Robotti, , Istoriia Moskoskogo avtozavoda imeni I.A. Likhacheva (Moscow, 1966)Google Scholar; Tarle, , “Stranitsy”Google Scholar; Reikhberg, G. E., Shapik, B. S., “Ob uchastii Amerikanskikh rabochikh v vosstanovlenii narodnogo khoziaistva sovetskoi respubliki,” Istoriia SSSR (1961).Google Scholar

9. On the AIK, see Strong; Tarle, , Druz'ia, 320Google Scholar; Istoriia Kuzbassa, (Kemerovo, 1967), 345–55; Graham, M., Swing Shift, pt. 2, “Kuzbass,” 85–213, (New York, 1951)Google Scholar, a novel Sally Stein brought to my attention; and Ipatieff, V. N., The Life of a Chemist (Stanford, 1946), 188.Google Scholar On the Interguelpo, see Ioffe, A. E., Internatsional'nye nauchnye i kul'turnye sviazi sovetskogo soiuza, 1928–32 gg (Moscow, 1969), 65Google Scholar; and the dissertation by Vorob'eva, E. D., “Iz istorii bor'by trudiaschikhsia Chekoslovakii za soiuz i druzhbu s narodami SSSR (1925–1927)” (Moscow, 1966).Google Scholar

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11. Kuusinen, A., The Ring of Destiny (New York, 1974), 9Google Scholar; L'vunin, Iu. A., “‘Solidarnost’ zarubezhnogo proletariata s sovetskim narodem v gody pervoi piatiletki,” Voprosy istorii 3 (1981): 53–66Google Scholar; Leonetti, A., Vittime italiane dello stalinismo in Urss (Milan, 1978)Google Scholar; Serge, V., Memorie di un rivoluzionario, 1901–41 (Florence, 1974), 292Google Scholar; Corneli, , 79.Google Scholar

12. Mokin, , 133–34Google Scholar; see also the dissertation by Troitskii, V. B., “Uchastie zarubezhnikh trudiashchikhsia v bor'be sovetskogo naroda…, (1925–32)” (Moscow, 1973).Google Scholar

13. Mokin, , 133–34Google Scholar; Ioffe, , Internatsional'nye, 69.Google Scholar

14. Mokin, , 133–34Google Scholar; Sharapov, N. P., “Ob uchastii inostrannykh rabochikh i spetsialistov v sotsialisticheskom stroitel'stve na Urale, 1930–34 gg,” Voprosy Istorii KPSS 3 (1966)Google Scholar; Kuusinen; Keiro, R., “Emigration of Finns from North America to Soviet Karelia in the 1930s,” in the Finnish Experience in the Western Great Lakes Region, ed. Karni, M., Kaups, M. and Ollila, D. (Turku, 1975)Google Scholar; Keiro, R., “The Canadian Finns in Soviet Karelia in the 1930s,” in Finnish Diaspora, ed. Karni, M. (Toronto, 1981)Google Scholar; Ahola, D. J., Finnish-American and International Communism (Lanham, Maryland, 1981).Google Scholar

15. Mokin, , 133–34Google Scholar; Ioffe, , Internasional'nye, 69Google Scholar; Industrializatsiia SSSR, 1929–1932 gg (Moscow, 1970), 405.

16. Iz istorii Magnitogorskogo…, 20; Kolomichenko, I. I., “Sozdanie traktornoi promyshlenosti v SSSR,” Istoriia SSSR 1 (1957): 96Google Scholar; Beal, F., Foreign Workers in a Soviet Tractor Plant (Moscow, 1933), 13–14Google Scholar; Ozerov, , 114–15Google Scholar; Moscow Daily News, July 16, 1932; March 8, 1932; September 27, 1932; August 10, 1933.

17. Leningradskie rabochie v bor'be za sotsializm, 1926–1937 gg (Leningrad, 1965), 278–79; Moscow Daily News, December 18, 1932; January 1, 1933; Mokin, , 137.Google Scholar

18. Beal, , 17Google Scholar; Moscow Daily News, July 25, 1933; Les Hommes de Stalingrad (Moscow, 1935), 77; Sixty Letters: Foreign Workers Write of Their Life and Work in the USSR (Moscow, 1936), 155; Inostrannye rabochie na stroike SSSR, (Moscow, 1932); Industrializatsiia SSSR, 1929–32 gg, 405; Sutton, A. C., Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1930–1945 (Stanford, 1968 and 1971).Google Scholar

19. Moscow Daily News, May 26, 1933. On the Schützbundler, see Braunthal, J., La tragedia dell' Austria (Florence, 1955)Google Scholar; Krivitski, W. G., Sono stato agente di Stalin (Milan, 1944), 51Google Scholar; Stajner, K., 7,000 jours en Siberie (Paris, 1983), 107–8Google Scholar; Delo trudiashchikhsia vsego mira (Moscow, 1957, 350. On Spanish workers, Vanni, E., Io, comunista in Russia (Bologna, 1950)Google Scholar; Gonzales, V., La vie et la mort en Urss, 1939–49 (Paris, 1950)Google Scholar; Fernández, A., Emigración republicana española, 1939–1945 (Madrid, 1972)Google Scholar; Artis-Gener, A., La diáspora republicana (Barcelona, 1975).Google Scholar

20. Tarle, , Druz'ia, 189Google Scholar; Rybinskii; Ozerov, , 94–95.Google Scholar On the immigration demands that grew out of workers' defeats, see Tarle, , Druz'ia, 36–37Google Scholar; Robotti; Strong.

21. Izvestiia, August 24, 1931; Mokin, , 130Google Scholar; Rote Fahne, May 20, 1932; Ioffe, , Internatsional'nye, 63.Google Scholar

22. On Soviet immigration policy, see Tarle, , “Stranitsy.” On early 1920s' hopes, Pravda, 11 18, 1920Google Scholar; Ekonomicheskaia zhizn', July 30, 1920; Tarle, , Druz'ia, 44.Google Scholar

23. On Russian wages, see Strumilin, G. G., Zarabotnaia plata i proizvoditel'nosti truda v russkoi promyshlennosti v 1913–1922 (Moscow, 1923)Google Scholar; Rashin, A. G., Zarabotnaia plata za vosstanovitel'nyi period khoziaistva SSSR (Moscow, 1928)Google Scholar; Zagorski, S., Wages and Regulations of Conditions of Labour in the USSR (Geneva, 1930).Google Scholar On the STO commission policy, Rybinskii; Ozerov, , 94–95Google Scholar; Makarenko, A. A., Mirovoi proletariat—Strane sovetov, 1921–23 gg (Kiev, 1963), 167.Google Scholar

24. Istoriia rabochigo klassa Sibiri (Novosibirsk, 1982), 242.

25. On zazhigalochnichestvo, the stealthy production of “cigarette lighters,” in the early 1920s, see Corneli, , 14Google Scholar; Serge, , 124Google Scholar; Pelletier, M., Mon voyage aventureux en Russie communiste (Giard, 1922), 150.Google Scholar For official data, see Shkaratan, O. I., “Material'noe blagosostoianie rabochego klassa SSSR v perekhodnyi period ot kapitalizma k sotsializau,” Istoriia SSSR 3 (1964): 20–21.Google Scholar In 1921 Petrograd, “private sales” and “other” sources of income made up more than 70 percent of working-class families' incomes. See also note 23.

26. Ciliga, A., Dieci anni dietro il sipario di ferro (Rome, 1951), 10, 23Google Scholar; Silone, I. in The God That Failed, ed. Grossman, Richard (Milan, 1980), 128.Google Scholar

27. Zalcman, M., Histoire véridique de Moshe, ouvrier juif et communiste au temps de Staline (Paris, 1977), 63Google Scholar; Keiro, , “Emigration”; Sixty Letters, 16, 25Google Scholar; Smith, A., I Was a Soviet Worker (New York, 1936), 29.Google Scholar

28. Beal, F., Proletarian Journey (New York, 1937), 188–89, 196Google Scholar; Zalcman, , 68Google Scholar; Stajner, , 57Google Scholar; Smith, , 32–35Google Scholar; Comollo, G., Il commissario Pietro (Savigliano, 1979), 85–86Google Scholar; Roasio, A., Figlio della classe operaia (Milan, 1977), 71, 92Google Scholar; Guarnaschelli, E., Une petite pierre. L'exil, la deportation et la mort d'un ouvrier communist italien en Urss (Paris, 1979), 153, 322–23Google Scholar; Reuther, V., The Brothers Reuther: A Memoir (Boston, 1976), 89Google Scholar; Robotti, , 24Google Scholar; Corneli, , 12–14, 48Google Scholar; Serge, , 321Google Scholar; Strong, , 88Google Scholar; Bornet, F., Je reviens de Russie (Paris, 1947), 24–25Google Scholar; Littlepage, J. D. and Demaree, B., In Search of Soviet Gold (New York, 1939), 60.Google Scholar Bornet and Littlepage were engineers.

29. On “war” in Russia, see Guarnaschelli, , 31Google Scholar; and Scott, J., Behind the Urals (Bloomington, Ind., 1973), 5.Google Scholar On foreign workers and collectivization, Smith, 56–57Google Scholar; Robotti, , 77–82Google Scholar; Zalcman, , 78–92.Google Scholar The foreign workers' report about Kazakhstan is in Biulleten' Oppozitsii, 54/55 (03 1937); Littlepage, 154–65.Google Scholar

30. Guarnaschelli, , 25Google Scholar; Cormier, , 134Google Scholar; Stajner, , 88Google Scholar; Zalcman, , 88Google Scholar; Comollo, , 86–87.Google Scholar

31. On the privileges accorded to skilled work in the 1920s and on their evolution, see Schwarz, , 193 ffGoogle Scholar; Tomsky's, report to the Vos'moi S'ezd professional 'nykh soiuzov SSSR (Moscow, 1928)Google Scholar; Friedmann, G., Dalla Santa Russia all’ Urss (Rome, 1949)Google Scholar; Deutscher, I., Soviet Trade Unions (Oxford, 1950), 113–14.Google Scholar

32. Beal, , Proletarian, 232.Google Scholar

33. On prostitution: Strong, , 318Google Scholar; Smith, , 105–6, 176–79Google Scholar; Serge, , 322.Google Scholar On privileges and Russian women: Reuther, , 88–105.Google Scholar For love stories, Scott's marriage, and the Spaniards' adventures in 1939, in Vanni, , 31.Google Scholar On domestic help: Friedmann, , 120Google Scholar; Scott, , 131Google Scholar; Robotti, , 45.Google Scholar

34. On wages: Smith, , 37, 40–43, 119Google Scholar; Ghezzi, in Serge, , 292Google Scholar; Scott, , 127Google Scholar; Rückkehrer Berichten über die Sowjetunion (Berlin, 1942), 17–69Google Scholar; Vanni, , 90, 130–31, 141, 148, 155, 161, 165.Google Scholar For contemporary Soviet appraisal of the situation: Industrializatsiia SSSR, 1929–1932, 372–95. For modern Soviet appraisals, see Tverdokhleb, A. A., “Istoriografiia material' nogo blagosostoianiia rabochego klassa SSSR v perekhodnyi period.” Istoriia SSSR 3 (1974).Google Scholar For modern Western estimates: Chapman, J., Real Wages in the Soviet Union since 1928 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zaleski, E., Soviet Planning for Economic Growth, 1933–1952 (London, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barber, J., “The Standard of Living of Soviet Industrial Workers, 1928–1941” in Bettelheim.Google Scholar On fines and donations: Smith, , 116, 121Google Scholar; Yvon, M., L'urss telle qu'elle est (Paris, 1938), 42Google Scholar; Rückkehrer, 34; Zalcman, , 71–72.Google Scholar On industrial accidents: Scott, , 14Google Scholar; Rückkehrer, 132–44 (for confirmation see NKT SSSR), Trud v SSSR (k XVI partiinomu s'ezdu) (Moscow, 1930) 4, 20.Google Scholar

35. On hirings at factory gates: Beal, , Proletarian, 241Google Scholar; Ciocca, G. (an Italian engineer), Giudizio sul bolscevismo (Milan, 1934), 114Google Scholar; Scott, , 14.Google Scholar For a modern Soviet estimate of orgnabor and samotek, see Arutunian's, Iu. V. piece in Formirovanie i razvitie sovetskogo rabochego klassa (1917–1961 gg) (Moscow, 1964).Google Scholar On piecework and foreign workers' protests: Moscow Daily News, May 5, 1932; September 6, 16, 1932; and January 18, 1933; Smith, , 202–3Google Scholar; Beal, , Foreign Worker, 20–21Google Scholar; Rückkehrer, 158–68. On foremen's power and privileges: Scott, , 168Google Scholar; Keiro, , “Canadian”Google Scholar; Zalcman, , 90Google Scholar; Robotti, , 34–36, 139Google Scholar; Rückkehrer, 164; Ciliga, , vol. 2, 111.Google Scholar On trade unions: Yvon, , 96–98Google Scholar; Scott, , 34Google Scholar; Zalcman, , 77Google Scholar; Biulleten' Oppozitsii (B.O.) 65 (April 1938). Foreign workers' statements thus confirm Tomsky's 1928 warnings (in Vos'moi, 44) about the consequences of the Stalinist turnabout on union life. On forced labor: Scott, , 85Google Scholar; Vanni, , 186Google Scholar; Littlepage, , 60–67Google Scholar; Strong, , 88Google Scholar; Bornet, , 24–25.Google Scholar S. M. Frankfurt, a Kuznetskstroi boss, personally told the story of forced laborers' utilization in Kuznetsk. See his Rozhdenie stali i chiloveka (Moscow, 1935), 139–40.

36. On searchings and armed guards: Zalcman, , 92–93Google Scholar; Yvon, M., Ce qu' est devenue la Révolution Russe (Paris, n.d.), 47Google Scholar; Beal, , Proletarian, 241Google Scholar; Ciocca, , 146, 178–79.Google Scholar On the presence of guards at the bottom of mines: Legay, K., Un Mineur Français chez les Russes (Paris, 1937), 84.Google Scholar On informers and disappearances: the foreign workers' reports in B. O., 56–57 (July/August 1937), 60–61 (December 1937), and 65 (April 1938); Zalcman, , 93, 112–13Google Scholar; Corneli, , 54–55Google Scholar; Smith, , 270Google Scholar; Littlepage, , 11, 170–72Google Scholar; Vanni, , 156Google Scholar; Menotti's interview in the Settimana Incom, November 26, 1961; Ciliga, , 42, 227, 234.Google Scholar In 1935, Ciliga met entire colonies of Leningrad workers, deported in the Yenisei basin area, who, “with a note of working class pride,” called themselves “the Leningrad ones.”

37. Zalcman, , 93Google Scholar; Smith, , 47Google Scholar; Corneli, , 116Google Scholar; Scott, , 127Google Scholar; Serge, , 327.Google Scholar

38. On alcohol and its surrogates: Comollo, , 93Google Scholar; Serge, , 322Google Scholar; B. O. 65 (April 1938); Robotti, , 89–93Google Scholar; Rukeyser, W. A. (an American engineer), Working for the Soviet (New York, 1932), 161.Google Scholar On older skilled workers' resistence, paralysis, irony, and bitterness: Ciliga, , 77 ff, 103, 114Google Scholar; Smith, , 201 ff, 241 ffGoogle Scholar; Zalcman, , 112–13.Google Scholar See also Barber, J., “Soviet Workers and the State,” Center for Russian and East European Studies, Annual Conference, Birmingham, 1980.Google Scholar On “unpalatable countercultures,” see, for example, Vanni, , 140.Google Scholar These testimonies thus confirm of the picture sketched by Lewin in his Making.

39. Beal, , Proletarian, 239.Google Scholar

40. Sixty Letters, 155; Friedmann, , 75Google Scholar; Robotti, , 26–29Google Scholar; Ersilio Ambrogi's papers at the BDIC. (Ambrogi was a communist deputy who emigrated to Russia in 1922. Employed as a manager in the Urals in 1932, he found himself “approving certain measures” that he had previously “furiously fought”). Hirsch, A.Google Scholar, an American engineer, even complained that Russian labor “was not forced enough” and praised the 1930s repressive labor legislation. See his Industrialized Russia (New York, 1934), 109.Google Scholar

41. Keiro, , “Canadian”Google Scholar; Gonzales, , 40Google Scholar; Vanni, , 46Google Scholar, on the beatings Spanish workers received when they broke production norms.

42. Zalcman, , 96Google Scholar; Scott, , 195.Google Scholar See also Kravchenko, V., I Chose Freedom (Milan, 1948), 387, 392, 468.Google Scholar

43. B. O. 17–18 (November–December, 1930); Keiro, , “Emigration”Google Scholar; Smith, , 10, 75Google Scholar; Beal, , Proletarian, 231–32Google Scholar; Vanni, , 43, 46.Google Scholar

44. Corneli, , 53Google Scholar; Krivitsky, , 51Google Scholar, maintains that the NKVD considered the Schützbundler a nest of spies. See Stajner, , 57Google Scholar, on the officially promoted nationalistic resurgence. In the new climate, Primo Gibelli, a former Fiat worker who had become a Soviet Air Force official and was later to die in Spain, was pensioned off. On that decade's ideological evolutions, see Timasheff, N. S., The Great Retreat (New York, 1946)Google Scholar and Lewin, M., “Grappling with Stalinism,” in Making, 286–314.Google Scholar

45. Reuther, , 95 ffGoogle Scholar; Smith, , 66.Google Scholar

46. Corneli, , 61Google Scholar; Vanni, , 136, 165.Google Scholar

47. Postishev, P. P., “On Work among Foreign Workers,” Pravda, 10 26, 1930Google Scholar; Rubiner, F., Partiino-massovaia rabota sredi inostrannykh rabochikh (Moscow, 1932).Google Scholar The most important publication was the Moscow Daily News, born on May 1, 1932 out of the merger between the Workers News, started at the beginning of 1931, and the Moscow News. A daily until the end of 1933 and a weekly afterward, its soul was Anna Louise Strong. Other newspapers were the Moskauer Rundschau and Leningrad's Rote Zeitung. Large factories published their own newspapers, often in both English and German.

48. Keiro, , “Emigration,” 220Google Scholar; Scott, , 226Google Scholar; Serge, , 345Google Scholar; Stajner, , 57Google Scholar; Zalcman, , 91.Google Scholar

49. Frankfurt, , 67, 110.Google Scholar

50. Scott, , 14Google Scholar; Frankfurt, , 68, 74.Google Scholar In 1930 the Magnitogorsk soviet ruled that those working in the open had a “right” to a ten minute break when the temperature was between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius below zero; when the temperature was lower than 31 degrees below zero, the work day was to be reduced by an hour, etc. Only at forty below was work in the open to be stopped for regular workers and at fifty below for forced laborers (in Iz istorii magnitogorskogo, 75).

51. See, for example, Smith, , 68, 217.Google Scholar

52. Strong, , 327Google Scholar; Smith, , 66Google Scholar; Beal, , Proletarian, 234, 264, 269.Google Scholar For protests against stakhanovism and udarnichestvo, see Rückkehrer, 158, 163; Beal, , Foreign Worker, 20–21Google Scholar; Les hommes de Stalingrad, 77; Corneli, , 33Google Scholar; Smith, , 65.Google Scholar

53. Stajner, , 107–8Google Scholar; Buber-Neuman, M., Under Two Dictators (London, 1949), 13.Google Scholar

54. Vanni, , 46 ffGoogle Scholar; Stajner, , 110–11.Google Scholar

55. Comollo, , 88–89Google Scholar; Roasio, , 92Google Scholar; Guarnaschelli, , 90, 93Google Scholar; Zaccaria, G., 200 comunisti italianitra le vittime dello stalinismo in Urss (Milan, 1964)Google Scholar; Corneli, , 56Google Scholar; Agosti, A., Brunelli, L., “I comunisti italiani nell' Urss, 1919–1943,” in Fondazione G. G. Feltrinelli, Annali, 1981.Google Scholar

56. Maximoff, G. P., The Guillotine at Work (Chicago, 1940), 336 ffGoogle Scholar; Coalman's, story in Obozrenie 5 (1984).Google Scholar

57. Corneli; Leonetti; and Detti, Andreucci e, Il movimento operaio italiano, Dizionario biografico, 1853–1953, vol. 1–4 (Rome, 1975)Google Scholar for the Italians. Luigi Calligaris, a communist worker from Trieste, and Petrini, an Italian anarchist from Florence, faced prosecution in 1933. See the Italian left opposition paper, Il Prometeo 96 (December 26, 1933) and La Lotta Anarchica 35 (1933). See Kuusinen, , 95–96Google Scholar, for the American-Finns. When the commune was disbanded and its machinery confiscated, some of its members returned to the United States.

58. Reuther, , 100.Google Scholar

59. Some, like many American-Finns, gladly gave up their passports. Kuusinen, , 91–96.Google Scholar Others refused, like two German communist workers, whom an old comrade had told that “that would have been the end of your privileges. Afterward you will be at their mercy.” Dwinger, E. E., Et Dieu se tait? (Paris, 1941), 34.Google Scholar The various political emigrants' clubs, under pressure from Soviet authorities, insisted that their members accept Soviet citizenship (Zacearia, , 35Google Scholar). Scarioli's story is in La Settimana Incom, November 26, 1961.

60. Weissberg, A., Conspiracy of Silence (London, 1952)Google Scholar; Zalcman, , 169–70Google Scholar; a letter from Moscow in B. O. (July 1933), attributed the shutdown to lack of kerosene. Contemporary Soviet newspapers spoke of trudnosti.

61. Leonetti, , 65Google Scholar; Andreucci e Detti. During WWII, many Spanish workers made a similar choice and volunteered in the Soviet army. Not all were accepted. Vanni, , 126Google Scholar; Fernández, , 95Google Scholar, writes that seven hundred enlisted and two hundred died.

62. Medvedev, R., Let History Judge (New York, 1971), 273Google Scholar; Buber, , 136 ffGoogle Scholar; Weissberg, , 487–89Google Scholar; Herling, G., Un mondo a parte (Bari, 1958), 92Google Scholar; and Stajner, , 118–19Google Scholar, for the German communists the NKVD handed to the Gestapo in 1940–41. Both Buber-Neuman, who ended up in Ravensbruck, and Weissberg were among them.

63. See the mentioned works by Keiro, Kuusinen, and Ahola. Among the many witnesses who registered the Finns' presence in the camps are Stajner, , 81–82Google Scholar, and Herling. See also, Pike, D. W., “Les Républicains espagnols incarcérés en Urss dans les années 1940,” Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps 3/4 (1985)Google Scholar; Livre Blanc, 199 ff. For Italians, see Mieli, P., Togliatti 1937 (Milan, 1965), 89–97Google Scholar; Spriano, P., Storia del partito comunista italiano (Turin, 1970), 3, 241–44Google Scholar; and an article by Miriam Mafai in Repubblica, October 26, 1982. For Poles, see Medvedev, , 270–74Google Scholar; Guarnaschelli, , 322–23.Google Scholar For Yugoslavs, , Stajner, , 11.Google Scholar

64. Herling, , 37Google Scholar; Kuusìnen, , 91–96, 153–56Google Scholar; Guarnaschelli, , 322–23Google Scholar; Stajner, , 11, 110–11.Google Scholar

65. For Albertini, see Zacearia, , 84Google Scholar; and Vanni, , 162–64.Google Scholar A Frenchworker, L. Mouchebouf, was arrested for the same reason (18 ans en Urss, 1923–1941 [Edition du Centre, 1942]).

66. See, for example, the Workers News, December 20, 1931 concerning these letters, many of which were seized when their authors were arrested, as in the case of the Italian Costa, a dock-workers' organizer from Venice. The will to “tell the truth” once back in their countries was expressed by Smith's friends as well as by Guarnaschelli, who repeatedly spoke of it in his letter, and by Pussey, a Renault worker who, dying in a camp, regretted that he would not be able to tell of his experiences (Bornet, , 165–69Google Scholar). People like Yvon and Smith acted on their intention to pass on information about what they had observed.

67. One can think of the four thousand who answered the Rückkehrer inquiry, of the hundreds of Americans who fled from Stalingrad, Kharkov and Kuznetsk (Strong, , 317, 326–27Google Scholar; Beal, , Proletarian, 269Google Scholar), or of the thousands of Finns who were able to return.

68. Medvedev, , 307 ff.Google Scholar

69. Serge, , 184Google Scholar; Tarle, , 98.Google Scholar Already in the 1920s, a few German workers wrote of their experience in Russia. See for example In Sowjet Russland (Berlin, 1928).

70. Goldman, , 773.Google Scholar

71. For anarchists' relationships with the Soviet Union after Kronstadt, see the mentioned works by Berkman, Goldman and Maximoff. For the communist left's position, see the B. O. and its numerous, national counterparts, such as Il Prometeo. The international campaign for Serge's freedom had a huge echo inside the left.

72. Beal, , 234Google Scholar; Smith, , 163–68Google Scholar; Comollo, , 98Google Scholar; and the mentioned passages in Buber-Neuman, Stajner, Weissberg, and Herling.

73. Friedmann, , 107Google Scholar; Ce qu'est devenue la Révolution Russe is the text of the three lectures Yvon gave at St. Etienne.

74. Strong, , 317, 326Google Scholar; Smith, , 43–44, 58–60.Google Scholar

75. Beal, , 281, 288.Google Scholar Cecelia Bucki told me about Smith's reception in Bridgeport.

76. On the Reuthers, besides Victor's memoirs, see Cormier, F., Eaton, W. J., Reuther (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1970)Google Scholar; and Ilyashov, A., “Victor Reuther on the Soviet Experience: An Interview,” International Review of Social History 31 (1986): 298–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77. Ahola has been her main critic. Soviet archival data, however, indicate that Kuusinen was at least more precise (see note 14).

78. II Popolo d' Italia published unsigned columns, written in italics, commenting on Calligaris's and Petrini's stories on December 8 and December 27, 1933.

79. In a 1931 secret circular, Togliatti wrote that “there are some comrades who are caught in the anarchists' trap and say that evidence of Ghezzi's guilt will be given by Soviet authorities, thus accepting the anarchists'demands.… We know that a rank-and-file meeting passed a resolution to send a delegation to the USSR in order … to control if [Ghezzi's] arrest was justified.” In Opere (Rome, 1973), vol. 3, 90–92.

80. As late as 1960, when Nazareno Scarioli, returning to Genzano from the Kolyma fields after almost forty years, started to describe his experiences at the party organized for him by the communist local, many deemed him an “old madman.” Pecognaga's plaque honors Bruno Rossi, a former secretary of the local Camera del Lavoro, who went to Russia in 1932, was arrested in the late 1930s, and shot in 1941.