communism among intellectuals in the Western democracies after release of Soviet propaganda on the Five Year Plan, just when he and other commanders had begun to lose hope in the Bolshevik revolution. This revelation soon inspired a massive espionage and propaganda effort worldwide, with particular emphasis on nations with democratic governments. Later years From 1964 to 1972 Barmine served as senior adviser on Soviet affairs at the U.S. Information Agency. Barmine won three awards for outstanding public service while in the federal government. Family After attending the Red Army's general staff school, he was eventually assigned to the Soviet Foreign Office and Commissariat of Trade. He married a widow with prominent connections in the Communist Party, Olga Federovna, and the two traveled to Soviet Turkestan to work in the party apparatus. There they both became ill with severe cases of malaria. Returning to Moscow, the couple had two twin boys, but his wife died in childbirth. In 1948, Barmine married Edith Kermit Roosevelt, granddaughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. They had one daughter, Margot Roosevelt. In 1952, they divorced. Barmine then married Halyna Barmine. Alexander Barmine died at age of 88 on December 25, 1987, in Rockville, Maryland. Writings Barmine began publishing anti-Stalinist, anti-communist writings within less than a month of his defection. He also published a short treatment of the Moscow trials, dated December 22, 1937, in an American foreign affairs magazine. He published his first book on Stalin's Terror, Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat, in 1938. After the assassinations and questionable accidental deaths of several exiled Soviet citizens in Western Europe, including Trotsky's own son, Lev Sedov, he and an unidentified person left Europe for the United States in 1940. Barmine's aging mother and his two sons remained behind in the Soviet Union; unable to get them out of the country, he never saw them again. He published a second book, One Who Survived, in 1945, in which he wrote:When I work on my book, I feel as though I were walking in a graveyard. All my friends and life associates have been shot. It seems to be some kind of a mistake that I am alive. By making his revelations public, Barmine felt the book might help frustrate Stalin's immediate desire to silence him. Upon its release, the Soviet government made no comment on Barmine's revelations, though they had denounced earlier works by other Soviet émigré authors. Articles