Yanks for Stalin
Interview Transcript

Alexander Luznevoy,  (cont)

A.  What reasons?  Our government asked them to come.  Without the Americans the factory would never have been built, we had just begun it, the first factory.  We had no experience building such enormous factories.

Q.  What reasons did the Americans have for coming here?

A.  They were paid well, of course.

Q.  But what do you think their reasons were?

A.  What reasons?  Well, they were all engineers, and it seems to me that they were all retired.  I didn't see any young engineers.  Rubins was elderly, he probably was collecting a pension.  He was an old man already.  I only saw a young German engineer here who assembled turbines.

Q.  What was his name?

A.  Garthman.  He came here at age 37 and stayed for two years.

Q.  And the workers?

A.  Yes?

Q.  The American workers?

A.  I didn't see any American workers either.  There were only American engineers.

Q.  Why were Americans needed here?

A.  I knew then that the contract with that American company was dissolved.  It was dissolved.  That was in 1932, I believe, no, in 1931.  And the engineers who had come from other companies probably knew that the contract with Marquee had been dissolved, and that means that they came here with good intentions, they came to help us.  To show us and share their experience.  They did everything so well.

Q.  Why was the contract dissolved?

A.  Because Marquee did not fulfill its contractual obligations.  It stopped sending us drawings.  That's why the contract was dissolved.  People are different everywhere, and in America there are all sorts of people too.  There were those who had positive attitudes toward the Soviet Union, and there were those that hated it.  Probably because it was backwards.  Some helped us, others hindered us.  We respected all our American engineers.  Much was written in the newspapers about them in those days.  But I didn't pay much attention.  As I said, I was nobody, I dug ditches.  But I began to write, to learn to write.  Poetry called me, and I began to devote all my time to this art, and achieved a certain success.  I became a member of the Writer's Union.  I've published 25 books.  Poetry, satire, humor, prose, two novels, several short stories.  In short, I've tried all literary forms except for drama.  I don't write drama.

Q.  Tell me about it.

A.  It was after the war that the book was printed in our newspaper.

Q.  No, not about the book, but about him.  Did you know him?

A.  No, I didn't.

Q.  Okay.  Did you know any other Americans?

A.  No.  Though I remember one Italian very well.  Dante Chirileveki.

Q.  Could you talk about the black snow?

A.  When I arrived the first blast furnace was already in operation.  Komsomolsk.  Already in operation.  And as usual, there was a terrible amount of soot.  The sky was black, and the snow on the ground was black.  But we weren't scared, we didn't understand back then.  No, we weren't scared, Russians aren't scared of anything.  Not the cold, not starvation.  We survive everything.  I went through that school, and I didn't fear anything either.  Besides the school, I went through three wars.

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