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B O O K S “special interest pleading.” Farr is thoughtful and analytic, but sees the world as essentially reflecting a single problem. He gives no indication he is aware that U.S. diplomacy simultaneously struggles with challenges including a revanchist Russia, nuclear proliferation, global warming, global poverty/trade imbalances, and racial/ethnic conflicts. Nor, despite Farr’s arguments, is it obvious that a religious rather than a “realist” reading of these problems will generate positive results for U.S. foreign policy. David T. Jones is a retired Senior FSO and a frequent contributor to the Journal. Among many other assignments, he was an editor for the first State Department International Religious Freedom report. Workers’ Paradise Lost The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia Tim Tzouliadis, Penguin Press, 2008, $29.95, hardcover, 436 pages. REVIEWED BY MARKO VELIKONJA The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia is a beautifully written and thoroughly researched, but wrenching, account of the fate of the thousands of U.S. citizens who emigrated to the Soviet Union during the early 1930s, where they were largely abandoned by their own government. At first welcomed and in many cases recruited to work in Soviet mines and factories, these Americans and other Westerners who had emigrated increasingly began to be viewed with suspicion. Most were ultimately executed or sent to the gulags. Author Tim Tzouliadis focuses on how the U.S. State Department — and in particular the second ambassador to the USSR, Joseph Davies — turned a blind eye to the Great Terror, failing to take any meaningful measures to assist American expatriates even after it became clear how endangered they were. While the first U.S. ambassador, William Bullitt, was ultimately disabused of any illusions about the Stalinist regime, Davies always attempted to please his hosts, even going so far as apologizing after some U.S. diplomats had attempted to assist a jailed U.S. citizen. Davies’ approach was apparently not popular with many of his subordi- 52 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 9
B O O K S nates, though several legendary U.S. diplomats who worked in Moscow seemed equally indifferent to the plight of their fellow citizens — or at least unwilling to risk their careers to help them. Some of this indifference seems to have stemmed from the feeling that these Americans had brought their fate upon themselves by leaving the United States, and perhaps also from class differences between the diplomats of that era and the working-class expatriates who sought their assistance. In addition, Tzouliadis reminds us that many Americans in the 1930s still believed in the notion that the Soviet Union was a “workers’ paradise,” and tended to dismiss accounts of the Great Terror as propaganda. The great singer Paul Robeson on his visits to Russia reportedly refused appeals from persons looking to escape the USSR, and publicly supported Stalin until the end. While one obviously needs to be careful about passing judgment on diplomats of a different era, Tzouliadis persuasively argues that Davies failed to use the leverage available to him. In contrast, he notes, the Austrian ambassador to Moscow rescued dozens of his similarly-endangered compatriots, and the German government, newly allied with the USSR, didn’t hesitate to use its influence to secure release of its citizens (most of whom ended up in German concentration camps, however). Included among the ranks of Tzouliadis’ “forsaken” are U.S. servicemen captured during World War II and Korea, most never heard from again. While this chapter could be its own book, Tzouliadis uses it as an effective bridge to relations with modern-day Russia. After the fall of the USSR, an early 1990s intergovernmental project to analyze newly opened Soviet-era archives to trace the fate of those captured U.S. servicemen quickly ran into resistance from the Russian security agencies. Those truly knowledgeable about the events of this era may take exception to some of Tzouliadis’ assertions and interpretations. Nonetheless, The Forsaken is a superb introduction to the Great Terror and the story of the thousands of Americans caught up in it. ■ Marko Velikonja joined the Foreign Service in 1999 and has served in Manila, Montreal and Moscow. He is currently an economic officer in Yerevan. A P R I L 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 53
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PLANNING FOR RETIREMENT ■ COMING
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