- 08 Sep 2005 03:56
#711735
Hundreds jailed, killed in purges
By Alan Cullison, For The Associated Press
MOSCOW -- Alexander Gelver was afraid. People around him were getting arrested. He wanted to get out of the country, to go home to America, so he went to the U.S. Embassy for help.
But outside the gates, he was stopped -- by the secret police.
Was it true, his interrogator demanded, that Gelver thought life was better in the United States than the Soviet Union? Had he actually said as much to his fellow workers at a local factory?
All true, said Gelver, who had been brought to Russia years earlier by his parents. An open-and-shut case of espionage, the police declared.
And then they made him disappear. His fate remained unknown for 60 years.
Gelver was just one of hundreds of American leftists who had moved here in the 1920s and 1930s to help Josef Stalin build the new worker's paradise, and who then vanished, one by one, from the face of the earth.
Their friends and relatives have grown old without ever knowing, for certain, what happened to them.
But now, the answer is emerging, documented in moldy secret police files obtained by The Associated Press, revealed in recent interviews with people who survived the Stalinist purges, told in old U.S. State Department documents, some declassified at the AP's request.
On New Year's Day 1938, his file shows, 24-year-old Alexander Gelver of Oshkosh, Wis., was executed. There is reason to believe that hundreds of Americans met a similar fate.
The files of 15 missing Americans whose disappearances were investigated in detail by the AP show that two died in Soviet labor camps and eight others were executed. The other five spent years in Soviet prisons.
They were artists, factory workers, teachers and engineers. They were arrested after engaging in such subversive activities as wearing American clothes, asking the U.S. Embassy for help or talking about life back home.
Some were American-born. Others were Russian-born, naturalized Americans who went back to the Soviet Union and took their American-born children with them. Some were members of the Communist Party; most were not.
Some were deported by the United States because of their subversive politics, but many went willingly. The Soviet government recruited them by the hundreds as advisers to fledgling Russian industries, often paying their passage.
But before long, Stalin's paranoia about anything foreign overcame his need for expertise.
Arthur Talent was only 7 years old when he was brought to Moscow from Boston by his mother, but he had already developed a taste for American music. At age 20 or so, he somehow became acquainted with the wife of Paul Robeson, an American famous for his singing voice and left-wing politics. When the Robesons came to Moscow for a performance, she brought the young man a new suit of American clothes.
On Jan. 28, 1938, agents searched Talent's apartment and seized the clothes, which they insisted were payment for his spying.
The first 11 pages of his interrogation transcript show him denying the accusation. At the end of page 11, the transcript says: "The interrogation has been interrupted."
What happened during the recess is left to the imagination.
When the interrogation resumed, Talent was told: "You are arrested and accused of espionage activities in the USSR in favor of one foreign state. Do you plead guilty?"
His response: "Yes! I plead guilty of being involved in espionage activities for Latvia. After a 38-day denial I decided to tell the inquest the truth."
A crumpled slip of paper, inserted near the end of the file, says Talent was shot June 7, 1938. He was 21 years old.
Internal State Department memos show that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow closely watched the arrests in Moscow and sent reports of the terror to Washington. But officials were unable or unwilling to do much about it, perhaps because American suspicion of communism was already in full bloom.
State Department records show that some Americans who came to the embassy for help in getting back home were turned away because they lacked up-to-date photographs or the few dollars in U.S. currency needed to renew their U.S. passports.
Ivan Dubin, a native-born Russian, became a U.S. citizen after his family moved to Pottsville, Pa. Returning to Russia for a visit, he fell in love there and got married. He was trying to arrange to bring his bride home to America when the purges began. On March 1, 1938, he came to the U.S. Embassy to renew his passport but was turned away because he lacked the required passport photographs.
Dubin promised to return the next day, but never did. His wife called the embassy to say he had never returned home. Dubin's secret police file, discovered in Moscow, shows he was arrested outside the embassy, accused of espionage and shot. He was 26.
George F. Kennan, later the architect of the U.S. policy of "containment" of Soviet Communism, was a Moscow embassy official during the purges. Now 93, he responded to some AP questions in writing. It was difficult for the embassy to help Americans who had obtained Soviet passports, as many of these victims had, Kennan said.
The Soviets regarded such persons as Soviet citizens, maintained that they couldn't leave the country without government permission and did not recognize that the United States had a legitimate interest in them.
The U.S. Embassy tried to resolve the citizenship issue with the Soviet Foreign Ministry. But by mid-1937, so many Soviet Foreign Ministry officials had been shot in the purges that the Americans had no one to negotiate with, says Sergei Zhuravlev, a prominent Russian historian.
Some relatives had clung to hope that somehow their loved ones survived. There was little reason to hope; the survival rate was low.
Memorial, an advocacy group for Russian purge victims, found a list of 10,000 people who were shot at one of the regime's Moscow execution grounds. Among them: four young men from Boston who had shagged flies on a Russian-American baseball team in Moscow.
Marvin Volat, who left his native Buffalo, N.Y., at age 20 to study violin in Moscow, was arrested after leaving the U.S. Embassy on March 11, 1938.
"It is his doubtful claim that he is homesick for his parents, and therefore stopped by the U.S. Embassy to get a visa to go to the U.S.," a secret police major wrote for the file.
Without evidence, Volat was charged with counter-revolutionary activity and espionage. After two months of interrogation, he confessed to taking photographs of military planes taking off and landing at a Moscow airfield. He was sentenced to hard labor.
On the last page of his file, a faint scribble says he died the following February in a camp in the Far East. He was 28.
The fate of missing Americans in Stalin's Russia
The cases of 15 Americans who disappeared in Russia during the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and '40s were investigated in detail by The Associated Press. Some were American born and others were naturalized Americans. A few had renounced their American citizenship at the time of their deaths. Here is what was learned of their fates:
Arthur Abolin, 28, of Boston, was executed in 1938.
Carl Abolin, 25, his brother, also of Boston, was executed the same day.
Alexander Gelver, 24, of Oshkosh, Wis., was executed in 1938.
Ivan Dubin, 26, of Pottsville, Pa., was executed in 1938.
Lovett Fort-Whiteman, 44, founder of the American Communist Party's black affiliate, The American Negro Labor Congress, died in a Soviet gulag in 1939, about two years after his arrest.
Julius Hecker, 57, of New York City, was executed in 1938.
Frank Hrinkevich, age uncertain, a U.S. Army veteran who had lived for a time in New York City, was released after one year in a Soviet prison.
Ruth Ikal, 30, of Philadelphia, the American wife of a Russian spy, was exiled to a closed Soviet city in the south and was pleading, as late as 1958, to be alowed to return to America. Her final fate is unrecorded.
Arnold Preeden, 22, of Boston, was executed in 1938.
Walter Preeden, 24, his brother, also of Boston, was executed the same day.
Joseph Sgovio was arrested in 1938 and spent 11 years in Soviet labor camps. His health broken, he died in Russia shortly after his release.
Thomas Sgovio, Joseph's son, was one of the few Americans known to have survived the notorious prison camps in the Russian Far East. He was imprisoned for 16 years before his release, was allowed to return to the U.S. in 1960 and died in Phoenix last summer at age 81.
Elias Singer, 59, of New York City, was executed in 1937.
Arthur Talent, 21, of Boston, confessed to espionage after a 38-day interrogation and was executed in 1938.
Marvin Volat, 28, of Buffalo, N.Y., died in 1939 after a year at hard labor in a gulag.
By Alan Cullison, For The Associated Press
MOSCOW -- Alexander Gelver was afraid. People around him were getting arrested. He wanted to get out of the country, to go home to America, so he went to the U.S. Embassy for help.
But outside the gates, he was stopped -- by the secret police.
Was it true, his interrogator demanded, that Gelver thought life was better in the United States than the Soviet Union? Had he actually said as much to his fellow workers at a local factory?
All true, said Gelver, who had been brought to Russia years earlier by his parents. An open-and-shut case of espionage, the police declared.
And then they made him disappear. His fate remained unknown for 60 years.
Gelver was just one of hundreds of American leftists who had moved here in the 1920s and 1930s to help Josef Stalin build the new worker's paradise, and who then vanished, one by one, from the face of the earth.
Their friends and relatives have grown old without ever knowing, for certain, what happened to them.
But now, the answer is emerging, documented in moldy secret police files obtained by The Associated Press, revealed in recent interviews with people who survived the Stalinist purges, told in old U.S. State Department documents, some declassified at the AP's request.
On New Year's Day 1938, his file shows, 24-year-old Alexander Gelver of Oshkosh, Wis., was executed. There is reason to believe that hundreds of Americans met a similar fate.
The files of 15 missing Americans whose disappearances were investigated in detail by the AP show that two died in Soviet labor camps and eight others were executed. The other five spent years in Soviet prisons.
They were artists, factory workers, teachers and engineers. They were arrested after engaging in such subversive activities as wearing American clothes, asking the U.S. Embassy for help or talking about life back home.
Some were American-born. Others were Russian-born, naturalized Americans who went back to the Soviet Union and took their American-born children with them. Some were members of the Communist Party; most were not.
Some were deported by the United States because of their subversive politics, but many went willingly. The Soviet government recruited them by the hundreds as advisers to fledgling Russian industries, often paying their passage.
But before long, Stalin's paranoia about anything foreign overcame his need for expertise.
Arthur Talent was only 7 years old when he was brought to Moscow from Boston by his mother, but he had already developed a taste for American music. At age 20 or so, he somehow became acquainted with the wife of Paul Robeson, an American famous for his singing voice and left-wing politics. When the Robesons came to Moscow for a performance, she brought the young man a new suit of American clothes.
On Jan. 28, 1938, agents searched Talent's apartment and seized the clothes, which they insisted were payment for his spying.
The first 11 pages of his interrogation transcript show him denying the accusation. At the end of page 11, the transcript says: "The interrogation has been interrupted."
What happened during the recess is left to the imagination.
When the interrogation resumed, Talent was told: "You are arrested and accused of espionage activities in the USSR in favor of one foreign state. Do you plead guilty?"
His response: "Yes! I plead guilty of being involved in espionage activities for Latvia. After a 38-day denial I decided to tell the inquest the truth."
A crumpled slip of paper, inserted near the end of the file, says Talent was shot June 7, 1938. He was 21 years old.
Internal State Department memos show that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow closely watched the arrests in Moscow and sent reports of the terror to Washington. But officials were unable or unwilling to do much about it, perhaps because American suspicion of communism was already in full bloom.
State Department records show that some Americans who came to the embassy for help in getting back home were turned away because they lacked up-to-date photographs or the few dollars in U.S. currency needed to renew their U.S. passports.
Ivan Dubin, a native-born Russian, became a U.S. citizen after his family moved to Pottsville, Pa. Returning to Russia for a visit, he fell in love there and got married. He was trying to arrange to bring his bride home to America when the purges began. On March 1, 1938, he came to the U.S. Embassy to renew his passport but was turned away because he lacked the required passport photographs.
Dubin promised to return the next day, but never did. His wife called the embassy to say he had never returned home. Dubin's secret police file, discovered in Moscow, shows he was arrested outside the embassy, accused of espionage and shot. He was 26.
George F. Kennan, later the architect of the U.S. policy of "containment" of Soviet Communism, was a Moscow embassy official during the purges. Now 93, he responded to some AP questions in writing. It was difficult for the embassy to help Americans who had obtained Soviet passports, as many of these victims had, Kennan said.
The Soviets regarded such persons as Soviet citizens, maintained that they couldn't leave the country without government permission and did not recognize that the United States had a legitimate interest in them.
The U.S. Embassy tried to resolve the citizenship issue with the Soviet Foreign Ministry. But by mid-1937, so many Soviet Foreign Ministry officials had been shot in the purges that the Americans had no one to negotiate with, says Sergei Zhuravlev, a prominent Russian historian.
Some relatives had clung to hope that somehow their loved ones survived. There was little reason to hope; the survival rate was low.
Memorial, an advocacy group for Russian purge victims, found a list of 10,000 people who were shot at one of the regime's Moscow execution grounds. Among them: four young men from Boston who had shagged flies on a Russian-American baseball team in Moscow.
Marvin Volat, who left his native Buffalo, N.Y., at age 20 to study violin in Moscow, was arrested after leaving the U.S. Embassy on March 11, 1938.
"It is his doubtful claim that he is homesick for his parents, and therefore stopped by the U.S. Embassy to get a visa to go to the U.S.," a secret police major wrote for the file.
Without evidence, Volat was charged with counter-revolutionary activity and espionage. After two months of interrogation, he confessed to taking photographs of military planes taking off and landing at a Moscow airfield. He was sentenced to hard labor.
On the last page of his file, a faint scribble says he died the following February in a camp in the Far East. He was 28.
The fate of missing Americans in Stalin's Russia
The cases of 15 Americans who disappeared in Russia during the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and '40s were investigated in detail by The Associated Press. Some were American born and others were naturalized Americans. A few had renounced their American citizenship at the time of their deaths. Here is what was learned of their fates:
Arthur Abolin, 28, of Boston, was executed in 1938.
Carl Abolin, 25, his brother, also of Boston, was executed the same day.
Alexander Gelver, 24, of Oshkosh, Wis., was executed in 1938.
Ivan Dubin, 26, of Pottsville, Pa., was executed in 1938.
Lovett Fort-Whiteman, 44, founder of the American Communist Party's black affiliate, The American Negro Labor Congress, died in a Soviet gulag in 1939, about two years after his arrest.
Julius Hecker, 57, of New York City, was executed in 1938.
Frank Hrinkevich, age uncertain, a U.S. Army veteran who had lived for a time in New York City, was released after one year in a Soviet prison.
Ruth Ikal, 30, of Philadelphia, the American wife of a Russian spy, was exiled to a closed Soviet city in the south and was pleading, as late as 1958, to be alowed to return to America. Her final fate is unrecorded.
Arnold Preeden, 22, of Boston, was executed in 1938.
Walter Preeden, 24, his brother, also of Boston, was executed the same day.
Joseph Sgovio was arrested in 1938 and spent 11 years in Soviet labor camps. His health broken, he died in Russia shortly after his release.
Thomas Sgovio, Joseph's son, was one of the few Americans known to have survived the notorious prison camps in the Russian Far East. He was imprisoned for 16 years before his release, was allowed to return to the U.S. in 1960 and died in Phoenix last summer at age 81.
Elias Singer, 59, of New York City, was executed in 1937.
Arthur Talent, 21, of Boston, confessed to espionage after a 38-day interrogation and was executed in 1938.
Marvin Volat, 28, of Buffalo, N.Y., died in 1939 after a year at hard labor in a gulag.
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