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The Forsaken

Longman-History Today Awards, 2009

Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780349117539

Price: £13.99

ON SALE: 6th August 2009

Genre: Humanities / History

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Of all the great movements of population to and from the United States, the least heralded is the migration, in the depths of the Depression of the nineteen-thirties, of thousands of men, women and children to Stalin’s Russia. Where capitalism had failed them, Communism promised dignity for the working man, racial equality, and honest labour. What in fact awaited them, however, was the most monstrous betrayal.
In a remarkable piece of historical investigation that spans seven decades of political change, Tim Tzouliadis follows these thousands from Pittsburgh and Detroit and Los Angeles, as their numbers dwindle on their epic and terrible journey. Through official records, memoirs, newspaper reports and interviews he searches the most closely guarded archive in modern history to reconstruct their story – one of honesty, vitality and idealism brought up against the brutal machinery of repression. His account exposes the self-serving American diplomats who refused their countrymen sanctuary, it analyses international relations and economic causes but also finds space to retrieve individual acts of kindness and self-sacrifice.

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Reviews

** 'A fine narrative, full of ironic, sometimes black humour; it is thoroughly researched, sympathetic to the victims and merciless to the perpetrators, and sketches in the now only too familiar background of lies and terror with deadly precision.
LITERARY REVIEW
** 'In this spellbinding book, Tim Tzouliadis brings to life an aspect of Stalin's Terror that had been almost completely forgotten
Roger Cox, THE SCOTSMAN
** 'This is an extremely impressive book. [Tzouliadis] has done phenomenal research...the writing is crisp and fluent, and the ordinary lives of these Americans come vividly to life; but at the same time the larger political framework is always present, lucidly outlined
Noel Malcolm, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
** 'In THE FORSAKEN, Tim Tzouliadi s' clear, strong narrative discloses the terrible fates which awaited those who wandered into the Soviet sphere
John Lloyd, FINANCIAL TIMES