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

[Elena Gapova]

Some more on the issue.

The woman who taught me English (privately) in the 1970-s, Mary Mintz, was
born in NY from Jewish parents.  In 1934 she emigrated to the USSR (she used
to tell me about Isadora Duncan and her unbelievable performance to the
music of the International in NY in the 1920-s) and was allocated to Gomel,
the second biggest city in Byelorussia. Her parents must have come to the US
from the Russian Empire, but she spoke no Russian at all when she arrived.
She got married almost immediately to a local man (she used to say that was
unbelievable love at first sight), het husband died several years later
(probably, was purged - I do not remember), and by WWII she was married
again to an artist (painter). In June 1941 she had her second baby, and when
Nazis started bombing Minsk (it was occupied in less than a week), she left
on foot with two children, one of them one month old, alongside with
thousands of other women, leaving their men to join the military and fight
(she was Jewish and had no choice in this matter). She spent the war in the
Urals and then returned to Minsk (ruined and devastated); her second husband
came back from the war safe. but died in the 1950-s of a heart attack. She
had two sons, a doctor and an architect.

All her life she was in correspondence with her best friend Esther in NY and
with her sister, and around 1975 went to the US for an extended visit. I do
not know how people took her in Stalin's time (in the 1970-ies there was an
aura of a "real american" around her, and the people she had for friends
belonged to intellectual elite groups), but she told me how during the war,
when the food was rationed and everyone permanently hungry, the wife of the
secretary of the "raikom" decided to take private English lessons from her
(in the Urals in 1943). When Mary went to the first one, that woman greeted
her and said, "Let's eat, first", to which Mary replied, No, I'd rather take
the food home (to give it to the children), and the woman said, "You eat
here and I'll give you more to take home", and gave her a whole big bag.

Quite a few people must have come to the USSR in the 1930-s; as many must
have been the children of Jewish emigrants who had left at the end of the
19th century, they must have returned either to Ukraine or Belarus (former
Pale of settlement). As they needed jobs, and native English was their most
important asset, some must have accumulated "disproportionately" at places
like izdatel'stvo "Progress" (did it exist before WWII? smth. must have
been, though) which translated and published Soviet fiction, or TASS and
other foreign propaganda think tanks (e/g/ gazeta "Moscow News" - when did
they start to publish it?). They must have also worked as translators of
texts like patents, inventions.

At one period in the 1970-s there was quite a lot of talk about Armand
Hummer (or Hammer), an American millionaire who came to Soviet Russia in the
1920-s and stayed there for a decade or more doing business (trade); I think
he bought some pretty important Western art from museum collections in the
1930-s. He was highly praised in Soviet press as he first started his
trading business when Lenin was still there, and this was intertreped as a
solidarity sign. He had a Russian wife when in the USSR (and an American one
after he left).

Also, I remember a (fairly recent) TV documentary about the woman-artist,
the mother of the black boy who was filmed in the "Circus"; she got married
to his father in the 1930-s when he was (probably, a marine guard) at the
American Embassy in Moscow. She spoke about the man highly in that
documentary.

Prof. Choi Chattarjee (in LA) is currently working on a book on American
women who came to Russia/USSR (as tourists, art collectors etc.). She might
know more on the issue, if someone is interested. I sent in inquiry re
Choi's project to a mailing list, and someone e-mailed from Tashkent, that
in a recent book "Etnicheskii atlas Uzbekistana" there is an article
(pp.20-25) about a certain Berta Goldon, who was leftist, married a black
man and in 1931 came to the USSR - to Uzbekistan - to participate in the
transformation of agriculture. At the end of the entry, there is a list of
publications on the topic.

Elena Gapova

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