American visitors to USSR, 1930s, 40s and 50s

[Irina VanDusen]

There is a movie, I believe by Savva Kulish, based on the real story of
his  childhood spent in a Soviet communal apartment. The action takes
place during Stalin's times. One of the tenants in that apartment was an
American woman whose husband had been imprisoned by Stalin (I might not
remember all the details correctly).
She probably was a representative of one of the two groups of Americans
mentioned in the previous e-mail
Her son later became a well known sculptor and moved to United States
(as a child of American citizen). He currently resides in Washington
area.

The movie, I think, is called "Zheleznyj zanaves".

Irina Van Dusen

>>> aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU 03/12/04 04:24PM >>>
>If you just peruse Worldcat (or your own library catalog) for the
subject
>heading
>
>Soviet Union Description and Travel
>

But that's not what Susan's student wants (see below). She wants to
know
how the Soviets reacted to Americans who came to visit during Stalin's
time
(of all times!). I doubt such info exists, unless someone wrote a
memoir
after the fact acknowledging clandestine meetings with Americans when
such
meetings were deadly.

There were two groups of Americans that came to the S.U. during those
years: left-leaning immigrants, mostly Jews, occasionally by-racial
couples
who had a hard time of it in the US (and boy did they get stuck in the
SU,
I knew at least three such families), and the second group were
American
communists who were coming to get instructions from the HQ. I forget
the
name of the head Communist and his common law wife, who came on one
such
visit with their son, jovially put him up in the "detskij dom"
(orphanage)
- communists' paradise in their estimation - and went about their
communist
business. When the time came to leave SU to go back home they were
told
that they could not take their son since he spoke Russian, so they left
him
there for good. I believe his new Russian name was Tixomirov, and he
became
a scientist. Then of course there were some performers, Paul Robeson,
for
ex., a frequent visitor to the" land of freedom".

Considering that Soviet citizens interested in self-preservation
should
have done their utmost not to meet foreigners, it's not very likely
that
they committed to paper information that could cause their
destruction.


>>Hello,
>>A student of mind would like to write about Soviet citizens'
impressions of
>>American visitors to the Soviet Union in the 30s, 40s and 50s.  Could
any
>>of you recommend some memoirs or other texts that she could use?
>>Thank you very much.
>>Susan Kresin


__________________________
 Alina Israeli
 LFS, American University
 4400 Mass. Ave., NW
 Washington, DC 20016

 phone:    (202) 885-2387
 fax:      (202) 885-1076

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