I am writing this letter in reply to a letter titled “Ungrateful Russia” by Clovis Steele (Jan. 19, 2010). First, I commend Steele for knowing something about Russian history. Due to word limitation, I can only rebut some of his comments.
First, it is true the steel mill at Magnitogorsk and the Ford truck plant at Gorky were built with many American designs and machinery. However, they were not a gift to Russia. The Soviet Union paid for them on a cash basis. Gold, mined on the Kolyma River, paid for these factories; a million slave laborers went up the Kolyma and never returned. In the Ukraine, the grain harvest was sold to pay for industrialization; 6 million perished for that. Grateful? That it wasn’t 10 million?
World War II, a great victory but at a staggering cost to the Soviet Union; a total loss of 28 million dead — one in seven citizens died driving the Nazis out. Eighty percent of all German casualties were in the Eastern Front.
It is undeniable that America sent almost 50,000 trucks to the Soviets; would you rather have kept the trucks and fought Germans instead? The United States lost 400,000 dead in the war; the Battle of Stalingrad (4 months long) cost 973,000 lives. Is gratitude measured in blood or trucks?
Americans gasp watching the beach assault in “Saving Private Ryan.” Russians made the same assault on the Volga at Stalingrad, but every day — for six weeks!
If you wish to see the greatest generation, go to Eastern Europe; that’s where they are buried. The American army came home after the war and fathered a baby boom; not so in Russia, the men never came home. Gratitude. Yes, that’s an interesting question.
Tell me, you have a street named for Langston Hughes in your city named for a man who watched a great crime in Soviet Russia, and remained silent. Are you ashamed for that?
Aida Zamilova Judah
Springfield, Mo.
