¹ For a record of the current inflow, see Monthly List of Russian Accessions, published by the Library of Congress, Washington, and distributed by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C.

² For a succinct account, see Fischer, George, “The New Soviet Emigration,” Russian Review, Vol. 8, pp. 6–19 (January, 1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The life stories of some typical representatives of the new Soviet emigration are contained in Fischer, Louis (ed.), Thirteen Who Fled (New York, 1949)Google Scholar. Many life histories and reminiscences have also appeared in Russian in the press and magazines of the new Soviet emigration. Among the more important journals are Posev, Ekho, and Borba, all published in Germany.

³ The median age of the group was between 41 and 42. Fifty of the 64 were under 50. Of the 64, 59 were men and five women. Fifty-one of the 64 were Great Russians, seven were Ukrainians, three Don Cossacks, and one each was from White Russia, the Kalmyk Republic, and Daghestan. Of the 64, 38 had had some form of higher education—technical institute or university. Their family backgrounds were diverse. Three of the 64 did not supply this information. The rest broke down as follows: two were of worker parentage, two of worker-peasant background, sixteen came from peasant families, six were from land-owner families, four came from the professional intelligentsia, ten from the scientific-technical intelligentsia, six from civil servant and salaried manager background, eight belonged to Czarist officer families, five were children of merchants and industrialists, and the fathers of two were Orthodox priests. In terms of their own status in the Soviet system, at least half of the 64 could be described as non-party intelligentsia. Six of the 64 acknowledged former party membership. Of these, two were army officers, one an engineer, one a high-level bureaucrat, and two were former NKVD employees. Eleven of the 64 were former members of the Komsomol. The bulk of the 64 had departed from the Soviet Union during the War. Of the 64, 34 had had some form of military service. Of these, fourteen were former privates, two non-commissioned officers, one an army doctor, seven lieutenants, three captains, three lieutenant-colonels, and four full colonels. Of the 64, 24 had been in Soviet prisons or had served terms of forced labor, another eighteen had not been arrested but had close relatives who had been apprehended; still another seventeen, although not arrested, had had their troubles with the Soviet authorities and lost jobs or status as a result. Only fifteen out of the group reported that both they and their relatives had escaped arrest or any form of disciplinary penalty.

The composition of the group may raise serious questions as to the representative significance of their testimony. It was certainly not a group which could be described as a cross section of the population of the USSR. In terms of family background, it was overweighted with carry-overs from the old regime; in terms of education and occupation, it was overweighted in the direction of the intelligentsia; and the probabilities are that it was also overweighted with those who had suffered some form of repression under the Soviet regime. But it is also worth noting that about nine per cent acknowledged former membership in the Communist party. This is at least double the percentage of party members in the Soviet Union itself. Seventeen per cent had been members of the Komsomol. And it is not without significance that the group contained a substantial number of collective farmers and workers as well as intellectuals, and that at least eight of the 64 had fled within the last year and a half from the Soviet Army of Occupation and Military Government in Germany and Austria.

⁴ The interviews varied in length from some that lasted only an hour to others that extended over a period of two days. No formal schedule of questions was used. The person interviewed was invited to relate his life story, and the questions that followed centered on his own experiences and opportunities for direct observation. Every effort was made to cross-check information supplied against official sources and the testimony of other informants similarly situated in the Soviet system. The interviewer was strongly impressed by the high degree of compartmentalization of information in the Soviet system. When informants discussed matters well beyond their own jobs, their immediate responsibilities, and their direct observation, what they had to say had to be treated with more than a shade of reserve. When they focused on their own personal experiences, their responses could, on the whole, be relied upon.

⁵ For an account of General Vlasov and his activities, see Fischer, George, “General Vlasov's Official Biography,” Russian Review, Vol. 8, pp. 284–301 (October, 1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Nicolaevsky, B. I., “Porazhenchestvo 1941–49 Godov i Gen. A. A. Vlasov, Materyaly dlya Istorii” [The Defeatist Movement in 1941–1949 and General Vlasov, Material Toward a History], Novy Zhurnal (New York), Vol. 18, pp. 209–234 Google Scholar, Vol. 19, pp. 211–247 (1948).