Alexander Gregory Barmine

Alexander Gregory Barmine (August 16, 1899 – 25 December, 1987) was a general in the Soviet Army who fled the purges of the Stalin era and escaped to the United States where he served in the Army during World War II and became a government official.

Biography

He was born in 1899 in Byelorussia. Barmine participated as a young man in the Russian Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution. At 21, he rose to the rank of brigadier general was later detailed by the Soviet army to service as a diplomat, intelligence officer and trade representative. He was known as one of the earliest high-ranking Soviet defectors.

A book he published in 1945 based on his experiences in the Soviet Union, titled "One Who Survived," was translated into twenty three languages and was lauded in The New Yorker by Edmund Wilson as illuminating, "unique and indispensable."

"For a foreigner who wants really to learn what has been happening of recent years in Russia -- as distinguished from demanding support either for faith or for hostile prejudice -- this is probably the one book that ought to be read," Wilson wrote.

A native of Mogilev in Belarus, Barmine was educated in Kiev, and in Moscow at the Frunze General Staff College and at the Oriental Languages Institute.

Barmine had been a protege of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a leading Soviet military figure, who was arrested and shot during the Great Purge of the late 1930s. When it appeared that a similar fate was in store for Barmine, he fled from Athens where he was chargé d'affaires.

In 1940 he went to New York and in 1942 joined an Army antiaircraft unit as a private. Later he worked for the Office of Strategic Services.

After a period of magazine writing, he joined the Voice of America in 1948, serving for sixteen years as chief of its Russian branch. From 1964 to 1972 he served as senior adviser on Soviet affairs at the U.S. Information Agency. Barmine, who became a U.S. citizen in 1943, won three awards for outstanding service while in government.

In 1948, Barmine was married to Edith Kermit Roosevelt, granddaughter of President Theodore Roosevelt; they were divorced in 1952, and the union produced one daughter. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=New Horizons |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,816622,00.html |quote=In Los Angeles, Mrs. Edith Kermit Roosevelt Barmine, 24, granddaughter of Teddy Roosevelt, filed suit for divorce from Alexander G. Barmine, ex-Soviet general and diplomat, who turned anti-Communist during the 1937 purge. Her charge: cruelty and nonsupport. |publisher=Time (magazine) |date=Monday, July 28, 1952 |accessdate=2008-06-26 ] [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Divorced |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,806574,00.html |quote=By Edith Kermit Roosevelt Barmine, 24, Hollywood columnist granddaughter of President Theodore Roosevelt: Alexander Gregory Barmine, 53, onetime Soviet army brigadier general, now chief of the State Department's Voice of America Russian section; after four years of marriage, one daughter; in Los Angeles. |publisher=Time (magazine) |date=Monday, November 3, 1952 |accessdate=2008-06-26 ]

He died at age eighty eight on 25 December, 1987 in Rockville, Maryland.cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Alexander G. Barmine, 88, Dies. Early High-Level Soviet Defector. |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5D91E3EF93BA15751C1A961948260 |quote=Alexander G. Barmine, a brigadier general in the Soviet Army who defected in 1937 and became an influential journalist and a United States Government official, died Friday at a nursing home in Rockville, Md. He died of complications resulting from a stroke. |publisher=New York Times |date=28 December, 1987 |accessdate=2008-06-26 ]

Works By Alexander Barmine

* "A Russian View of the Moscow Trials". Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of Intercourse and Education, 1938.
* "One Who Survived: The Life Story of a Russian Under the Soviets". G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1945.
* "Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat: Twenty Years in the Service of the U.S.S.R". Hyperion Press, 1973. ISBN 0-88355-040-7

ee also

* Moscow Trials

References