I Chose Freedom

By Victor Kravchenko

Book Overview

I Chose Freedom is melodramatic in title only. It is the work of an average communist party member during the Stalin era. Kravchenko was a technocrat who miraculously cut through the totalitarian... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0006AQTT0
• Release Date: January 1946
• Publisher: C. Scribner's sons
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Great book, must read to understand the era and communism

I had been looking forward to reading this book for sometime since it has been out of print. This was a seminal book in the process of deglamorizing Joe Stalin and the Soviet Union. The brutality of the Soviets as manifested by the genocidal famines, purges, persecution of religion, and overt aggression and occupation of neighboring countries was known to the West. However, due to the outright denials and other obfuscations by leftists of all sorts, and FDR's administration, presumably to get Stalin to side with them against Hitler, this knowledge was suppressed and did not influence public opinion. Well, the book is an expose of communism written by a communist. The author makes it clear that he realizes that he dedicated his life to a system that was essentially terroristic, and no effort on his part to instill or elicit decency from the rulers and their underlings was going to work inside the system. That is why he comes to the conviction that the only way to save his people is to write this expose, hoping that outside world could influence the Kremlin, so that they would finally feel some fear for what they were doing. The author was correct, and subsequantly other exposes influenced forces, both externally and internally, and brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, the author did pay a terrible price for his actions, as I am sure he knew he would, his family and freinds in the Soviet Union were severely persecuted. I dissagree with a earlier reviewer's point that the author was not a confirmed advocate of Western style democracy. Considering the time that the author had after he entered the country, defected and wrote the book, it is unlikely that he could do a reasonable comparative analysis of political systems. The author was convinced that the Soviet system was evil, and that it was much worse than Czarist Russia. Also consider how devastating it must have been to him to abandon this ideology to which he had devoted his life to. I am curious about what his further convictions were. Overall, this is a very well written book, a credit to the author's ability and his translators. I just wish that the publisher had included a little on the author's biography post the release of the book.

Best internal view of communist horrors on its own people

This book is the most important description of the soviet terror that stroke the whole society in communist countries much before Soljenistin. When published, all communist parties in Europe, continued to refuse to see the horrible reality for decades, showing that communism equal nazism. This book should be reprinted and advertised as a piece of XX century History

Review of I Chose Freedom

This book is probably the best book written about the extremes to which a government can systematically abuse it citizens, and how one individual can live through the horror and document the story first hand. Takes place in Stalinist Russia, but the back drop could be any totalitarian regime.

You won't get this in any History class.

I was given this book to read by someone who escaped the "workers' paradise" in Europe. For those who underestimate the evil of the Communist Party, you will quickly be awakened.

One of the great autobiographies

Despite the banal title, this somewhat forgotten book is a harrowing journey through Stalinist Russia. Possibly my all-time favorite autobiography.