What Happened To Americans Who Moved To The USSR During The Great Depression?

What happened to them?

(Public domain)

The Great Depression was a terrible time for thousands of average families across the United States. The economic downturn started on Wall Street and rapidly spread to a large number of developed nations around the world. Banks were strained. Wages dried up. People lost their family farms and homesteads. There was hunger and turmoil from Berlin to London to New York. In the midst of all of this economic chaos, one country weathered the storm better than most — the Soviet Union.

Thanks to dozens of crippling economic sanctions and international isolation, the USSR was not infected by the economic contagions spawned by the Great Depression. Stalin watched in amusement as western powers struggled to cope with the fallout. Seeing capitalism down on its luck was a powerful propaganda tool for communists worldwide.

To try and draw new converts to communism’s cause, the Soviet Union started advertising job openings and work postings in western cities hit hardest by the depression. Fliers started appearing in New York City, promising steady work and immunity from economic chaos to Americans who wanted a chance at a better life.

What better way to prove communism’s superiority to capitalism than by attracting thousands of formerly capitalist workers from places like New York and Ohio and giving them a better life in Russia?

To a modern reader, this sounds preposterous, but this was before the brutal Stalinist purges that swept the country and before the events of World War II and the Cold War. Communism was still relatively new, and the Great Depression’s pain was fresh and intense. So thousands of American families packed their bags, boarded ships bound for Europe, and crossed their fingers that communism would provide for them better than capitalism had.

Americans In The Motherland

The Soviet Union started advertising work positions in the United States in 1930 and instantly got a lot of interest. Some reports say that postings looking for 5,000 workers received 100,000 applicants. People were desperate for work, desperate for money, and desperate for escape. These applications made the rounds…