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Foreign Workers in Soviet Russia, 1920–40: Their Experience and Their Legacy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
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References
NOTES
The Comitato per le Scienze Economiche of the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and the Italian Ministero della Pubblica Isturzione finance the research project of which this study is part. I would like to thank them, as well as Patrick Fridenson and David Montgomery, as well as the Bibliotheque de Documentation International Contemporaine.
1. After the war Greek refugees also came. See Yannakakis, I., “Dimitris Vlandas, 1908–1985,” Materiaux pour I' histoire de notre temps 6 (04–06 1986): 23–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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4. Their biographies give an idea of the Russian-American “connection.” Shatov (1887–1943), an IWW member in the U.S., served in the 1930s as head of the Central Board of Railroad Construction. Krasnoshchekov (1880–1937) held important positions as Chairman of the Far Eastern Republic, Deputy Commissar of Finance, chief executive of the Industrial Bank, member of the VSNKh presidium, etc., before being eliminated during the great purges. Melnichansky (1886–1937) was a steelworker and a member of the Odessa soviet in 1905 and a Socialist party member in the U.S. He was to be the chairman of Moscow Trade Unions Council and the president of the textile workers' union first, and a member of the Gosplan presidium and of the RKI collegium later on. He too perished in 1937. Stepan S. Dybets, an anarchist who had been a Wobbly in the U.S., was, along with Mayer, another returnee, the head of the Soviet auto industry in the 1930s. See Berkman, A., The Bolshevik Myth, Diary 1920–22 (London, 1925)Google Scholar; Goldman, E., Living My Life (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia; Barmine, A., One Who Survived (New York, 1945), 242Google Scholar; Bek, A., Takova dolzhnost' (Moscow, 1973), 27–158.Google Scholar
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50. Scott, , 14Google Scholar; Frankfurt, , 68, 74.Google Scholar In 1930 the Magnitogorsk soviet ruled that those working in the open had a “right” to a ten minute break when the temperature was between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius below zero; when the temperature was lower than 31 degrees below zero, the work day was to be reduced by an hour, etc. Only at forty below was work in the open to be stopped for regular workers and at fifty below for forced laborers (in Iz istorii magnitogorskogo, 75).
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57. Corneli; Leonetti; and Detti, Andreucci e, Il movimento operaio italiano, Dizionario biografico, 1853–1953, vol. 1–4 (Rome, 1975)Google Scholar for the Italians. Luigi Calligaris, a communist worker from Trieste, and Petrini, an Italian anarchist from Florence, faced prosecution in 1933. See the Italian left opposition paper, Il Prometeo 96 (December 26, 1933) and La Lotta Anarchica 35 (1933). See Kuusinen, , 95–96Google Scholar, for the American-Finns. When the commune was disbanded and its machinery confiscated, some of its members returned to the United States.
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75. Beal, , 281, 288.Google Scholar Cecelia Bucki told me about Smith's reception in Bridgeport.
76. On the Reuthers, besides Victor's memoirs, see Cormier, F., Eaton, W. J., Reuther (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1970)Google Scholar; and Ilyashov, A., “Victor Reuther on the Soviet Experience: An Interview,” International Review of Social History 31 (1986): 298–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
77. Ahola has been her main critic. Soviet archival data, however, indicate that Kuusinen was at least more precise (see note 14).
78. II Popolo d' Italia published unsigned columns, written in italics, commenting on Calligaris's and Petrini's stories on December 8 and December 27, 1933.
79. In a 1931 secret circular, Togliatti wrote that “there are some comrades who are caught in the anarchists' trap and say that evidence of Ghezzi's guilt will be given by Soviet authorities, thus accepting the anarchists'demands.… We know that a rank-and-file meeting passed a resolution to send a delegation to the USSR in order … to control if [Ghezzi's] arrest was justified.” In Opere (Rome, 1973), vol. 3, 90–92.
80. As late as 1960, when Nazareno Scarioli, returning to Genzano from the Kolyma fields after almost forty years, started to describe his experiences at the party organized for him by the communist local, many deemed him an “old madman.” Pecognaga's plaque honors Bruno Rossi, a former secretary of the local Camera del Lavoro, who went to Russia in 1932, was arrested in the late 1930s, and shot in 1941.
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