The adventures of Americans in the country of the Bolsheviks: three stories of the beginning of the twentieth century

There were no diplomatic relations between Washington and Moscow until 1933, but Americans still went to Soviet Russia - out of a desire to do business, curiosity or idealism.

Фото: Depositphotos

The more enthusiastic the overseas guest was about the “building of a new world,” the more disappointed he was, as a rule. Three stories of participants in the construction of the “new world” are told by the BBC.

Sympathy: Sydney Hilman

In the 35th volume of Lenin's Complete Works, on page 526, a short note was published. It is dated October 13, 1921 and begins: “Comrade Hilman, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your help.”

The addressee of the note, 34-year-old Sydney Hilman, has been working on projects of varying degrees of success all his life.

Born in the Pale of Settlement in Lithuania. Preparing to become a rabbi, he achieved phenomenal successes in the study of the Talmud, but in 16 years left the Kaunas yeshiva and joined the Bund (Jewish Workers' Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia).

In 1907, he emigrated to the United States, where he got a job at a clothing factory in Chicago for a miserable six dollars a week, but in just seven years he became chairman of the All-American Light Industry Workers Union. And he knew a lot not only in the class struggle, but also in production and finance.

Unlike most American trade unionists, he liked Taylor's system of labor intensification. It is based on the timing of labor processes and the optimal organization of the workspace. This system, but under the name “NOT” and without mentioning its creator, was then introduced into the USSR.

In 1921, Hillman set about trying to help Russian class brothers: take control of some ruined textile factory and bring American order to it. The task was facilitated by the fact that he spoke Russian as a native language.

Photo: United States Library of Congress, Wikipedia, public domain

He traveled to Moscow, secured agreement in principle, raised thousands of dollars among sympathetic Americans 32, bought some equipment, and arrived in Russia with several volunteers.

For the experiment, he was allocated the factory number 36 in Ivanovo. However, on the spot, Hilman faced a bureaucracy, which, according to him, he could not imagine. And without thinking twice, he wrote to Lenin on the letterhead of the American trade union.

After the intervention from the Kremlin, everything was instantly adjusted. In less than a year, the factory became exemplary and provided 600 people with work.

In the summer of 1922, Hillman came up with a new initiative: to establish the Russian-American Industrial Corporation (RAIC), in which the Soviet contribution would be enterprises and labor, and the American investment and management.

34 textile and clothing factories in eight cities were transferred to the management of the corporation. They produced about 20% of Soviet light industry products and gave 17,5 jobs to thousands of people.

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Although American investors did not show interest in the shares of the corporation and were bought mainly by members of American trade unions, for three years, largely thanks to Hilman’s agitation, they managed to raise about two million then, or 30 million modern dollars.

But in 1925, the corporation suffered the common fate of all foreign concessions from the time of the NEP: the Soviet authorities announced the withdrawal from the joint venture and stopped paying dividends.

Sydney Hilman could not complain to Lenin again: he was no longer alive.

Subsequently, Hillman worked in the Franklin Roosevelt administration, created the first housing cooperative in the US in the Bronx (the adjoining street now bears his name) and founded the short-lived US Labor Party. He did not conduct any more affairs with the Soviet Union.

Professional: Hugh Cooper

Engineer Hugh Cooper designed and built the 4 hydroelectric power station (and participated in the construction of another 12 tee). The fifth was the Dnieper.

Officially, his position was called “chief construction consultant”: not everyone liked this.

After a large meeting in January 1927, Soviet business executives opposed the conclusion of a contract with Cooper, who, in their opinion, wanted too broad powers. But Joseph Stalin insisted on the invitation of the American; he was interested in the US experience.

The company of the famous industrial architect Albert Kahn from the USA alone designed 1929 objects for the USSR in 1932-521. The Stalingrad, Chelyabinsk and Kharkov tractor factories and aircraft factories in Kramatorsk and Tomsk were built according to American drawings and with American equipment. ZIL was completely reconstructed, and GAZ was built from scratch with the technical assistance of Ford Motor Company.

Photo: Dniprogess / Dniprostroy, Wikipedia, public domain

During the years of the first five-year plan, hundreds of American specialists worked in the USSR, but no one excelled like Hugh Cooper.

The Dnieper Hydroelectric Dam owes its famous horseshoe shape to him. Thanks to this, its length has increased and, consequently, the number of drains has increased in case of severe flooding.

In addition to purely technical solutions, Cooper insisted on piecework for concrete workers and excavators.

What he did not succeed in wasting down the bloated administrative staff. According to him, nowhere did he see such a number of managers and clerks.

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“You get the impression that you are not in Russia, but at a construction site in America,” wrote a correspondent for Electrical World magazine, who visited the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station in 1929.

At home, Cooper was known as an advocate of free enterprise and a tough anti-communist who demanded that the activities of the Comintern be banned in America.

He was accused of unscrupulousness for working for the Bolsheviks, and he replied that he made money in full accordance with his convictions.

At congressional hearings in 1931, where he was invited as an expert on the USSR, he spoke out for the development of economic ties, but against establishing diplomatic relations with Moscow.

For work in the Union, Cooper received a fee of 50 thousand dollars and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

Minded: Lovett Fort Whiteman

Vladimir Mayakovsky has a poem “Black and White” about the plight of a black shoe shiner. It ends with the words: “How does he know that such a question should be addressed to the Comintern, to Moscow?”

Lovett Fort-Whiteman did so, and the American magazine Time called him “the reddest among the blacks.”

Born in Dallas into a family of former slaves, Fort Whiteman was able to graduate from university, but found American society unfair and saw the ideal in the USSR.

He has been a member of the US Communist Party since its founding in 1919. Five years later, he arrived in Moscow, delivered a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, and remained to study at the Communist University of the East Workers.

Soon Fort Whiteman wrote a letter to the head of the Comintern, Grigory Zinoviev: he did not like the way African Americans were portrayed on Soviet advertising posters.

Photo: Wikipedia, public domain

A year later he returned to America so in love with the Soviet Union that he even dressed like a Bolshevik - in a leather jacket and boots.

He was published in left-wing publications, traveled to the southern states, campaigning to join the American Negro Labor Congress, but without much success.

The American Communists then divided: some suggested fighting for the creation of blacks in the southern states of the autonomous republic, citing the example of the USSR, others, including Fort Whiteman, believed that the race did not matter, and people were divided only into the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

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The FBI archived a fairly thick Fort Whiteman dossier. He was suspected of working for Soviet intelligence, but found no reason to hold him accountable.

In 1928, he finally moved to the USSR. There he was given a job at an academic institute (he was an anthropologist by training) and an apartment a five-minute walk from the Kremlin. In addition, Fort Whiteman taught English and wrote articles on the achievements of Soviet science in the Moscow News newspaper.

Nevertheless, after five years, he asked the Comintern to send him to the States, but was refused.

One can only wonder why he did not leave on his own. Most likely, he did not want to live and seek work on a common basis, but he wanted to be a party functionary, not only in the Soviet Union, but in America.

In 1935, another black Comintern member, William Patterson (father of the baby who starred in the film “The Circus”), wrote a denunciation that Fort Whiteman criticized Soviet life and maintained contacts with the US Embassy (he went there to apply for a new passport).

Fort Whiteman was sent to Semipalatinsk, where he worked as a boxing trainer, and in May 1938 was arrested.

Given at that time nothing was given: five years. But in the Kolyma camps, the mighty 44-year-old man did not last a year.

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