Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
Loading
AB![]()
author
Alexander Barmine
ALEXANDER GREGORY BARMINE (16 August 1899 - 25 December 1987) was an officer in the Soviet Army who fled the purges of the Joseph Stalin era.
Born in Mogilev, Mogilev Government, Russia (Russian E...view moreALEXANDER GREGORY BARMINE (16 August 1899 - 25 December 1987) was an officer in the Soviet Army who fled the purges of the Joseph Stalin era.
Born in Mogilev, Mogilev Government, Russia (Russian Empire) (now Belarus), he participated in the Russian Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution. Sent to a Red Army officer’s academy, he served in several battles. By the age of 22, he had risen to the rank of brigadier-general in the Red Army.
He was later educated in Kiev and Moscow at the Frunze General Staff College and at the Oriental Languages Institute. As a member of the Soviet GRU, he was assigned in 1935 to work abroad under diplomatic cover with the Soviet Foreign Office and Trade Ministry Commissariat. He then moved to Athens, Greece to take up an appointment as chargé d’affaires to the Soviet Embassy.
He fled Athens in 1937 and, after settling in France, later defected to the United States, where he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private during World War II as an anti-aircraft gunner. He later joined the Office of Strategic Services, obtained his U.S. citizenship in 1942, and worked for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services from 1943-44.
After the war, Barmine became an employee of the Voice of America during the Harry S. Truman administration. He later became a senior adviser on Soviet affairs at the United States Information Agency (USIA).
He passed away on Christmas Day in 1987, aged 88.
MAX FORRESTER EASTMAN (January 4, 1883 - March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. Initially supporting socialism, he became a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance, and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes. He later changed his views and became highly critical of socialism and communism following his experiences during a nearly two-year stay in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, as well as later studies. He died in 1969, aged 86.view less