In some of them I found inspiration for the protagonists of my novel.
Wilbur Hewitt’s alter ego is found in Charles Sorensen, the Ford production manager in Detroit responsible for the contract that bound the Soviet state corporation for the motorization of the nation, the Avtostroy, to Henry Ford. To set up the Avtozavod, Sorensen traveled to the Soviet Union, where he studied the specifics of the construction of the factory in Gorky on-site alongside Joseph Stalin and Valery Mezhlauk. Later, back in the United States, he requested authorization from Henry Ford to return to the Soviet Union and solve the problems plaguing the Avtozavod, but Henry Ford didn’t allow it. His very words were, “Charlie. Don’t you do it! They need a man like you. If you went over there, you would never come out again. Don’t take that chance!”
In the case of Sergei Loban, I drew inspiration from the figure of Valery Mezhlauk, the engineer and vice chairman of the State Planning Committee who was responsible for the agreement for the construction of the Avtozavod, signed in Dearborn on May 31, 1929, in the presence of the president of the American corporation, Henry Ford, and the Amtorg chairman, Saul Bron. A few years later, both Mezhlauk and Bron were summarily executed under the unfounded accusation of “enemy of the people” during the secret police’s reign of terror.
Viktor Smirnov could be seen as a reflection of the sinister director of the secret police Genrikh Yagoda, a figure described by his contemporaries as vain, corrupt, and sycophantic, a lover of luxuries and women. During his early years as a member of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police, he formed a network of spies and hired killers that infiltrated the NKVD, the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, until they gained total control. After allegedly murdering his immediate superior, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda was appointed People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs. It is thought that he then ordered the death of the celebrated Bolshevik leader Sergei Kirov, and unleashed a political bloodbath that would later be named the Great Purge, in which thousands were executed. During his time in power, Yagoda set up a secret laboratory in which he experimented with chemical products, poisons, and other instruments of torture that he used against his enemies. With the money taken from the accounts of the deceased, he built himself a sumptuous home with a private swimming pool in the center of Moscow. Ultimately, Yagoda met the same fate as his adversaries, and was shot in the back of the head in the same prison that was the site of many of his own horrific crimes.
Finally, Jack Beilis, though distinct in personality, shared some traits with Walter Reuther, who began his career with the Ford Motor Company, where he became an expert in molds. In 1932, he was fired as a result of the Great Depression, and traveled to the Soviet Union to work as an expert at the Avtozavod factory in Gorky. During the two years during which he offered his services, Walter Reuther experienced many of the blessings and evils of the Soviet political machinery. In the end, he made it back to the United States, where after a long period as an activist for workers’ rights, he joined the Democratic Party.
Soon after the Soviet factory was opened, commercial relations with Ford began to deteriorate, until in 1935 they completely broke down. In the words of Natalia Kolesnikova, director of the Gorkovsky Avtomobily Zavod Museum of History, it is highly likely that, had the Reuther brothers, who were managers at the time, remained in the Soviet Union, they would have been victims of Stalin’s purges. In 1938, the first director of the Gorkovsky Avtomobily Zavod (GAZ), Sergei Dakonov, was executed. All of the workshop managers were arrested. Numerous foreign workers, primarily Americans, suffered reprisals, and some disappeared forever into concentration camps or gulags.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
During the time I devoted to writing this book, many people were kind enough to share their knowledge and affection with me. To all of them I owe my sincere thanks, for without their selfless help, it would not have been possible to write this novel.
First, I would like to mention Professor Boris Mikhailovich Shpotov, member of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, and a Fulbright-Kennan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Professor Shpotov was kind enough to reply in great detail to many questions on the existence of sabotage, sporadically attributed to the foreign workers posted to the Avtozavod factories. I am equally grateful for the generous contribution of Dr. Heather D. DeHaan, associate professor of history, director of the Russian and East European Program, and academic vice president of the Binghamton Chapter, UUP, Binghamton University of New York, with whom I had in-depth conversations about the location and peculiarities of the American village in Gorky. I would also like to extend my thanks to Dr. Edward Jay Pershey, project manager at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, and Natalia Kolesnikova Vitalievna, director of the Gorkovsky Avtomobily Zavod Museum of History in Nizhny Novgorod (renamed Gorky in late 1932) for their help answering similar questions. Finally, I must also thank industrial design engineer Bernardo Tórtola, an expert in concept car styling and design, and a passionate collector of historical vehicles, who conscientiously advised me on the various specifications of the immaculately maintained Ford Model A that he owns.
As for those who have supported me day to day with their warmth and affection, I would like to mention my parents, of whom I am tremendously proud. Together with my siblings, my daughter, and my grandchildren, they are the people who complete my happiness and provide the stability that I need to write for such long periods without once feeling dispirited. These special individuals complete my happiness, but this happiness would not exist were it not for my wife, Maite, an exceptional person whom I love deeply and whom I consider to be the most wonderful woman on earth.
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