The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia

by Tim Tzouliadis

The Ford Motor Company had been trying to break into the Russian market since before the Revolution. In the summer of 1926, Henry Ford had sent a party of five employees to investigate conditions in Soviet Russia and to explore the idea of building a factory there. The group was led by the American engineer Bredo Berghoff, who quickly discovered the existing Soviet industry languishing in a state of chaos. Their factories were burdened with endless workers’ committees, reluctant management, widespread smoking, trash on the floors, crude oil in gas tanks, machine parts manufactured to random thickness—an endless litany of industrial despair. It was soon obvious that while a vast market in automobiles lay waiting in Russia, the construction of a privately owned factory at Ford’s expense would be tantamount to economic suicide, liable at any moment to government seizure by the Bolsheviks.