Yanks for Stalin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yanks for Stalin (1999) is a 60 minute History Undercover series special that aired on the History Channel. The special chronicles the story of American white and blue collar workers who left America during the Great Depression to work in the Soviet Union to bolster Joseph Stalin's Five-year plans.

Though white collar workers there received special treatment, blue collar laborers often had to suffer the deplorable conditions of Soviet workers. As one testified: "Men froze, hungered and suffered, but the construction work went on with a disregard for individuals and a mass heroism seldom paralleled in history."

This program examines how both the Soviets spun the facts and American industry shrouded the truth of how they aided the Soviets.

[edit] Books related to American workers in the Soviet Union

Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union (ISBN 0874918855) by Robert Robinson is the story of a Jamaican born Ford tool maker who left America to work in the Soviet Union during the 1930s.

They Took My Father: Finnish Americans in Stalin's Russia (ISBN 0816643369) by Mayme Sevander, Laurie Hertzel

Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel (ISBN 0253106001) by John Scott

American Engineer in Stalin's Russia: The Memoirs of Zara Witkin, 1932-1934 (ISBN 0520071344) by Zara Witkin

In Coming Out of the Ice (ISBN 0915031027) by Victor Herman, the author recounts how, as a young American, he was brought to Russia in 1931 by his father who returns to his native land to open and run an automobile plant. While there, Victor wins a medal for his athletic abilities, but is sent to a Gulag when he refuses to sign a paper testifying that he is a Russian.

Dancing Under the Red Star (ISBN 1400070783) by Karl Tobien relates the true story of Margaret Werner, the only American woman known to have survived Stalin's Gulags. She comes to Gorky in 1932 when Henry Ford sends 450 of his Detroit employees to operate the Gorky Automobile Plant. Her father is arrested on trumped up charges and Margaret and her mother are left to eke out a wretched life at times facing starvation and terror. Margaret is eventually arrested herself and sent to live ten years in a Soviet Gulag.