Stalin's Witnesses - Couverture rigide

Wachtel, Julius

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1908483385 ISBN 13 : 9781908483386

Editeur : Knox Robinson Publishing Ltd, 2013

Synopsis

Vilna, the Russian Empire, 1905. En route to deliver a secret pamphlet entrusted to him by his elder brothers, a young boy falls into the clutches of the Czar's secret police. Another decade will pass before the Crown gives way, not to liberally minded revolutionaries like Vladimir Romm, the boy now a young man, but to the pitiless disciples of an embittered lawyer named Lenin. For the next three-quarters of a century, Marxism in its cruelest form will rule Russia. Returning to Vilna during the winter of 1918 for the first time since his youth, Romm finds it occupied by Polish troops. As World War I yields to an uneasy peace, Romm joins Soviet intelligence. In 1934 Romm is named Izvestia's inaugural correspondent to Washington, where he is given orders to bring key Americans to the Soviet side. But as his career reaches its zenith, Romm is suddenly recalled, arrested, and forced to serve with four others as "witnesses" at the notorious 1937 Moscow show trial.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

<span id="caseCorrespondence_13492267786_text">Julius ('Jay') Wachtel was born in Italy. Two weeks later he and his parents, both Holocaust survivors, moved to Buenos Aires. A decade later the family emigrated to the U.S. and settled in Los Angeles. His mother’s liberation by Soviet troops led Jay to develop an interest in Russia. Solzhenitsyn’s zeks captured his imagination. Seas of the oppressed slogging through the Gulag, the victims of a soulless machine, struggling to retain hope despite unimaginable hardships. A disturbing yet inspiring example of the resilience of the human spirit.

After serving in Vietnam Jay embarked on a career in Federal law enforcement. Along the way he took a break to earn a Ph.D. in criminal justice at the State University of New York at Albany. Now retired from the government he enjoys a second calling, as a lecturer in criminal justice at California State University Fullerton.

Jay’s inspiration for Stalin’s Witnesses came while designing a course in Soviet justice. He was intrigued by the 1937 Moscow Show trial, where five “witnesses” were forced to corroborate the defendants’ false confessions. One witness captured his imagination. In 1934 Vladimir Romm, a Soviet intelligence officer, came to America as Izvestia correspondent to Washington. Romm, the scion of a distinguished publishing family (the famous film director Mikhail Romm is one of its descendants) was born in Vilna, same as Jay’s mother. He became the central character in Stalin’s Witnesses.

Jay and his wife Linda live in Southern California. Their daughter, Jennifer, is a senior at NYU.</span>

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Knox Robinson Publishing Ltd
• Date d'édition: 2013
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1908483385
• ISBN 13: 9781908483386
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 404
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible