From Great Depression to Stalin's Great Lie ; in the 1930s Soviet Russia Looked Like the Promised Land for American Emigrants - but Stalin's Welcome Was All Too Chilling

Summary

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The Forsaken: From the Great Depression to the Gulags: Hope and Betrayal in Stalin's Russia by Tim Tzouliadis (Little, Brown, [pounds]20)

AT THE height of the Great Depression, in the early 1930s, "there were more people out of work in the United States, both actually and proportionately, than in any nation on earth". A quarter of the workforce, 13 million people, were unemployed and desperate.

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Extract

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From Great Depression to Stalin's Great Lie ; in the 1930s Soviet Russia Looked Like the Promised Land for American Emigrants - but Stalin's Welcome Was All Too Chilling

In their desperation, many believed they would be better off in Soviet Russia, portrayed as a society that had growth and jobs and was centred on the worker. In October 1931, George Bernard Shaw had returned from Russia to broadcast a talk on American radio singing the country's p...

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