This is a story of belief, disillusionment and atonement. Long identified with leftist causes, the journalist Eugene Lyons was by background and sentiment predisposed to early support of the Russian Revolution. A "friendly correspondent," he was one of a coterie of foreign journalists permitted into the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era because their desire to serve the revolution was thought to outweigh their desire to serve the truth. Lyons first went to the Soviet Union in 1927, and spent six years there. He was ...
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This is a story of belief, disillusionment and atonement. Long identified with leftist causes, the journalist Eugene Lyons was by background and sentiment predisposed to early support of the Russian Revolution. A "friendly correspondent," he was one of a coterie of foreign journalists permitted into the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era because their desire to serve the revolution was thought to outweigh their desire to serve the truth. Lyons first went to the Soviet Union in 1927, and spent six years there. He was there as Stalin consolidated his power, through collectivization and its consequences, as the cultural and technical intelligentsia succumbed to the secret police, and as the mechanisms of terror were honed. As Ellen Frankel Paul notes in her major new introduction to this edition, "It was this murderous reality that Stalin's censors worked so assiduously to camouflage, corralling foreign correspondents as their often willing allies." Lyons was one of those allies.Assignment in Utopia describes why he refused to see the obvious, the forces that kept him from writing the truth, and the tortuous path he traveled in liberating himself. His story helps us understand how so many who were in a position to know were so silent for so long. In addition, it is a document, by an on-the-scene journalist, of major events in the critical period of the first Five-Year Plan.As Ellen Frankel Paul notes in her major new introduction to this new edition, Assignment in Utopia is particularly timely. The system it dissects in such devastating detail is in the process of being rejected throughout Eastern Europe and is under challenge in the Soviet Union itself. The book lends insight into the "political pilgrim" phenomenon described by Paul Hollander, in which visitors celebrate terrorist regimes, seemingly oblivious to their destructive force. The book is valuable for those interested in the Stalinist era in the Soviet Union, those interested in radical regimes and political change, as well as those interested in better understanding current events in Europe. It will also be useful for the tough questions it poses about journalistic ethics.
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Add this copy of Assignment in Utopia to cart. $88.82, good condition, Sold by Anybook rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincoln, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1938 by George G. Harrap & Co.
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This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has hardback covers. In good all round condition. No dust jacket. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 1050grams, ISBN:
Add this copy of Assignment in Utopia an Autobiography to cart. $102.02, fair condition, Sold by Solr Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincolnwood, IL, UNITED STATES, published 1937 by Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Add this copy of Assignment in Utopia [Signed] to cart. $122.00, very good condition, Sold by Bolerium Books Inc. rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from San Francisco, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1938 by Harcourt, Brace and Company.
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ix, 658p., eighth printing, originally published in 1937, black cloth hardcover boards. Signed and inscribed by the author to a friend dated April 11th, 1938. Lacking dustjacket, corners lightly bumped, slight hint of foxing on fore-edge, on the last three blank pages is a neatly pencilled in cursive what appears to be an unsigned book review, but not from Lyons' perspective and dated a few months before his gift inscription. Overall in very good condition.
Add this copy of Assignment in Utopia an Autobiography to cart. $98.02, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Austell, GA, UNITED STATES, published by Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Add this copy of Assignment in Utopia an Autobiography to cart. $103.00, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published by Harcourt, Brace and Company.
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Good. Dust jacket missing. Seventh printing. Shelf and handling wear to cover and binding, with general signs of previous use. Boards betray fading and nicks and other signs of wear and imperfection commensurate with age. Aesthetic fraying at the top of the spine, but the binding remains structurally sound. Erstwhile owner's signature on front endpaper; interior pages with text absent any extraneous marks. Sealed in plastic for shipping. Secure packaging for safe delivery.
Add this copy of Assignment in Utopia to cart. $225.70, new condition, Sold by Just one more Chapter rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Miramar, FL, UNITED STATES, published 1991 by Routledge.
Add this copy of Assignment in Utopia to cart. $382.00, fair condition, Sold by Second Story Books, ABAA rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Rockville, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1937 by Harcourt, Brace and Company.
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Book. Octavo, ix, 658 pages. In Good minus condition. Lacks dust jacket. Spine is blue with silver print. Boards in blue cloth. Wear to spine caps and corners, small stains on front panel, mild shelf wear. Text block has tinted top edge. Tanning to endpapers, tanning to pages 154-155 from inserted bookmark. NOTE: Shelved in Locked Annex Area, ND-HV Section. 1391782. FP New Rockville Stock.
One of the books that Whittaker Chambers held as one of the better observations of the utter failure of the Soviet system. Reading this as well as others like Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow", one can see the horrors of the collectivist mind.
Lyons is prescient about things happening today with this:
"?In the face of inhuman crowding and accumulating shortages the press and Soviet leaders talked of subways, new communal housing, and plans to make the city the world?s most beautiful capital. They boasted of plans as though they were already accomplishments. In life, as in my dispatches, every present tense discomfort was matched with a future tense promise. The mass of the population may have ignored these promises but the smaller group of communists, enthusiasts ?activists? found life more tolerable because they attuned it to their projected future. This capacity to accept the plan for the reality occasionally led to disastrous futility---too many planners felt that the job was completed once they had perfected an impressive blueprint and framed it for their office walls.?*
*Eugene Lyons, ?Assignment in Utopia?, 1937, Harcourt Brace, New York, Page 215.
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