"I Outlived the Bastards"

Born in Russia in 1901 as Abram Paretsky, he escaped Russia in 1920 and came to America in 1921. Changing his name to Albert Parry, in 1947, at Colgate, he started the first undergraduate Russian Studies program in America. Dying four months after the collapse of the USSR, he boasted, “I outlived the bastards.” His memoir recounts the life of a historian who lived history.

• Acknowledgments IntroductionChapter 1 I Am Taken to Be Shot Chapter 2 Rostov: Strident, Prosperous, Polyglot Chapter 3 My Family and Me Chapter 4 My Brother’s End Chapter 5 Prelude to Farewell Chapter 6 FarewellChapter 7 StowawayChapter 8 Do You Know my Uncle?Chapter 9 Bullet in the BackChapter 10 AmericanizationChapter 11 Diamonds Going BeggingChapter 12 Pete—Father—HollywoodChapter 13 So Pink the SheetChapter 14 Men of Muscle Chapter 15 Men of Spirit Chapter 16 Sundry Other TalentsChapter 17 My Mother and Some American Authors Chapter 18 Not Another ConradChapter 19 Introducing Nabokov to America Chapter 20 Back to College at Thirty-Four Chapter 21 Richard Wright and Others Chapter 22 On Pearl Harbor’s EveWhat Happened to Some of the People Mentioned in this MemoirAfterwordIndex

“One of the miracles of researching during the later twentieth century was the opportunity to speak to those who had navigated its rapids and survived the grinding wheels of its totalitarianism with their humanity intact. Those moments are all-but gone now but may be revisited in memoirs like this: the autobiography of Russian-born historian Albert Parry. The years recorded here take Parry from youth in Rostov-on-Don to mid-life work for the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to the CIA). Along the way he escaped a firing squad and shared a date with the future wife of Joseph Stalin and becomes a sterling critic of Soviet cruelty and a foot soldier in the battle against American isolationism. A picaresque chronicle that reminds the reader of the personhood behind the casualty statistics in history’s bloodiest years.”- Nicholas J. Cull, author of Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign against American “Neutrality” in World War II“This memoir reads like a novel and is impossible to put down. Parry's sharp eye and acid tongue bring to life a gallery of colorful characters and stories – tragic, touching, and funny – spanning worlds from Bolshevik revolutionaries to New York bohemians to Chicago academics. His discussion of the moral dilemmas facing an émigré writer with relatives in peril back home and of the fierce wartime clashes between America Firsters and interventionists speaks powerfully to the ethical challenges we face today.”- Slava Gerovitch, author of From Newspeak to Cyberspeak and Soviet Space Mythologies“Parry’s vivid and engrossing memoir traces his life from his near execution in Civil War Russia to his perilous escape from his homeland to the United States, where, after barely subsisting at a variety of jobs – from jewelry salesman to journalist – he finally found his true niche in academia.  A great virtue of the memoir is Parry’s lively and detailed depiction of the places he lived and people he met (ranging from General Tukhachevsky to Adlai Stevenson), his creation of a colorful panorama of social and political life in his native Rostov-on-the-Don and his adopted country. In addition his description of the persecution suffered by his brother and mother sheds light on the oppression in his native country, underlined by the grim fate of other Russian acquaintances, most notably Boris Pilnyak.  In summary, Parry’s memoir illuminates not only his remarkable life, but also his turbulent times.”- Edythe Haber, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts Boston