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159-657: America is primarily a one- and two-story country. The majority of the American population lives in small towns of three thousand, maybe five, nine, or fifteen thousand inhabitants. The United States, which was perceived as the land of machines and technological progress, was of great importance at the time for the Soviet Union, which had set itself the goal of overtaking the United States. This slogan (Russian: догнать и перегнать Америку; "catch up and surpass America")

318-725: A Knight of the Order of Leopold ; as Lindbergh shook the king's hand, he said: "I have heard much of the famous soldier-king of the Belgians." The United Press reported that "One million persons are in Brussels today to greet Lindbergh," constituting "the greatest welcome ever accorded a private citizen in Belgium." After Belgium, Lindbergh traveled to the United Kingdom . He departed Brussels and arrived at Croydon Air Field in

477-552: A commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Service Reserve Corps . Lindbergh later said that this year was critical to his development as both a focused, goal-oriented individual and as an aviator. The Army did not need additional active-duty pilots, however, so following graduation, Lindbergh returned to civilian aviation as a barnstormer and flight instructor , although as a reserve officer he also continued to do some part-time military flying by joining

636-554: A custom monoplane for $ 10,580, and on February 25 , 1927, a deal was formally closed. Dubbed the Spirit of St. Louis , the fabric-covered, single-seat, single-engine high-wing monoplane was designed jointly by Lindbergh and Ryan's chief engineer Donald A. Hall . The Spirit flew for the first time just two months later, and after a series of test flights Lindbergh took off from San Diego on May 10 . He went first to St. Louis, then on to Roosevelt Field on New York's Long Island . In

795-427: A disastrous effect on the military. The campaigns also affected many other categories of the society: intelligentsia , wealthy peasants —especially those lending out money or wealth ( kulaks )—and professionals. As the scope of the purge widened, the omnipresent suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries began affecting civilian life. The purge reached its peak between September 1936 and August 1938 under

954-536: A double team of interrogators. Bukharin's confession in particular became subject of much debate among Western observers, inspiring Koestler's acclaimed novel Darkness at Noon and philosophical essay by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Humanism and Terror . His confessions were somewhat different from others in that while he pleaded guilty to "sum total of crimes", he denied knowledge when it came to specific crimes. Some astute observers noted that he would allow only what

1113-760: A dozen other schools from Washington, D.C. , to California during his childhood and teenage years (none for more than two years), including the Force School and Sidwell Friends School while living in Washington with his father, and Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, California , while living there with his mother. Although he enrolled in the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in late 1920, Lindbergh dropped out in

1272-513: A fabricated confession by the interrogators. After the interrogations the files were submitted to NKVD troikas, which pronounced the verdicts in the absence of the accused. During a half-day-long session a troika went through several hundred cases, delivering either a death sentence or a sentence to the Gulag labor camps. Death sentences were immediately enforceable. The executions were carried out at night, either in prisons or in secluded areas run by

1431-494: A few hours had elapsed since takeoff. To keep his mind clear, Lindbergh descended and flew at only 10 feet (3 m) above the water's surface. By around 11:52 AM, he had climbed to an altitude of 200 feet (60 m), and at this point was 400 miles (640 km) distant from New York. Nova Scotia appeared ahead and, after flying over the Gulf of Maine , he was only "6 miles (10 km), or 2 degrees, off course." At 3:52 PM,

1590-697: A few years after the onset of the Great Depression (1929 to 1933), the writers Ilf and Petrov, correspondents of Pravda newspaper, arrived in New York on the SS Normandie passenger ship, which was the most modern ship of the time and its tenth voyage between Europe and America. In those days, the President of the United States was Franklin Roosevelt , who did a lot for rapprochement between

1749-596: A glimpse" of him. The crowd became so great that police had to call in reserves from Scotland Yard . Upon his arrival back in the United States aboard the U.S. Navy cruiser USS  Memphis  (CL-13) on June 11 , 1927, a fleet of warships and multiple flights of military aircraft escorted him up the Potomac River to the Washington Navy Yard , where President Calvin Coolidge awarded him

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1908-812: A goodwill tour to Mexico along with humorist and actor Will Rogers , Lindbergh met Anne in Mexico City in December 1927. The couple was married on May 27 , 1929, at the Morrow estate in Englewood, New Jersey , where they resided after their marriage before moving to the western part of the state. They had six children: Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. (1930–1932); Jon Morrow Lindbergh (1932–2021); Land Morrow Lindbergh (b. 1937), who studied anthropology at Stanford University ; Anne Lindbergh (1940–1993); Scott Lindbergh (b. 1942); and Reeve Lindbergh (b. 1945),

2067-789: A massive scale as victims of the repression. In addition to ordinary citizens, prominent members of the Communist Party were also targets for the purges. The purge of the Party was accompanied by the purge of the whole society. Soviet historians organize the Great Purge into three corresponding trials. The following events are used for the demarcation of the period: Between 1936 and 1938, three very large Moscow trials of former senior Communist Party leaders were held, in which they were accused of conspiring with fascist and capitalist powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember

2226-544: A number of the Soviet Union's diaspora nationalities: the Finnish , Latvian , Estonian , Bulgarian , Afghan , Iranian , Greek , and Chinese . Of the operations against national minorities, it was the largest one, second only to the "Kulak Operation" in terms of the number of victims. According to Timothy Snyder , ethnic Poles constituted the largest group of victims in the Great Terror, comprising less than 0.5% of

2385-462: A period of one month, they subsequently came to be known in the philatelic world as the covers of the "Lost Mail Flight". The historic flight was received with much notoriety in the press and marked the beginning of extended airmail service between the United States and Mexico. In his autobiography, Lindbergh derided pilots he met as womanizing "barnstormers"; he also criticized Army cadets for their "facile" approach to relationships. He wrote that

2544-600: A sign he had reached the other side of the Atlantic. He circled and flew closely, but no fishermen appeared on the boat decks, although he did see a face watching from a porthole. Dingle Bay , in County Kerry of southwest Ireland , was the first European land that Lindbergh encountered; he veered to get a better look and consulted his charts, identifying it as the southern tip of Ireland. The local time in Ireland

2703-467: A significant address, titled "Speech on Neutrality", outlining his position and arguments against greater American involvement in the war. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and German declaration of war against the U.S. , Lindbergh avidly supported the American war effort but was rejected for active duty, as Roosevelt refused to restore his commission. Instead he flew 50 combat missions in

2862-621: A week when he ran into a ditch in Glencoe, Minnesota , while flying his father—then running for the U.S. Senate—to a campaign stop. In October, Lindbergh flew his Jenny to Iowa , where he sold it to a flying student. He returned to Lincoln by train, where he joined Leon Klink and continued to barnstorm through the South for the next few months in Klink's Curtiss JN-4C "Canuck" (the Canadian version of

3021-534: A year later in May 1923 at Souther Field in Americus, Georgia , a former Army flight-training field, where he bought a World War I surplus Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" biplane for $ 500. Though Lindbergh had not touched an airplane in more than six months, he had already secretly decided that he was ready to take to the air by himself. After a half-hour of dual time with a pilot who was visiting the field, Lindbergh flew solo for

3180-426: Is debated by historians, but there is consensus that Kirov's death was the flashpoint at which Stalin decided to take action and begin the purges. Some later historians came to believe that Stalin arranged the murder, or at least that there was sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion. Kirov was a staunch Stalin loyalist, but Stalin may have viewed him as a potential rival because of his emerging popularity among

3339-466: Is in fine shape and I could circle Europe without touching it." Belgian troops with fixed bayonets protected the Spirit to avoid a repeat of the damage at Le Bourget. From Evere, Lindbergh motored to the U.S. embassy, and then went to place a wreath on the Belgian tomb of the unknown soldier . He then visited the Belgian royal palace at the invitation of King Albert I , where the king made Lindbergh

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3498-678: Is that this is worse than what happened at Le Bourget Field," he told them. "But all the same, I'm glad to be here." When he reached the reception room where British Secretary of State for Air Sir Samuel Hoare , U.S. Ambassador Alanson B. Houghton , and others waited, his first words were: "Save my plane!" Mechanics moved the Spirit to a hangar where it was placed "under a military guard." Also present at Croydon were former Secretary of State for Air Lord Thomson , Director of Civil Aviation Sir Sefton Brancker , and Brig. Gen. P. R. C. Groves . Accompanied by two Royal Air Force planes, he then flew 90 miles from Croydon to Gosport , where he left

3657-431: The 33 + 1 ⁄ 2 hours of the flight, the aircraft fought icing , flew blind through fog for several hours, and Lindbergh navigated only by dead reckoning (he was not proficient at navigating by the sun and stars and he rejected radio navigation gear as heavy and unreliable). He was fortunate that the winds over the Atlantic cancelled each other out, giving him zero wind drift—and thus accurate navigation during

3816-653: The Ogonyok magazine under the title "American Photos". The text was accompanied by about 150 American photographs by Ilf, which captured the appearance of the country and portraits of people with whom the writers met in America. In 1936, the travel sketches "One-story America" were first published in the magazine "Banner". In 1937 they were published as a separate publication in Roman-Gazeta, in Goslitizdat and in

3975-717: The Spirit of St. Louis , was designed to compete for the $ 25,000 Orteig Prize for the first flight between the two cities. Lindbergh was raised mostly in Little Falls, Minnesota , and Washington, D.C., the son of U.S. Congressman Charles August Lindbergh . He became a U.S. Army Air Service cadet in 1924. Later that year, he was hired as a U.S. Air Mail pilot in the Greater St. Louis area, where he began to prepare for his historic 1927 transatlantic flight . For his flight, President Calvin Coolidge presented Lindbergh both

4134-714: The 110th Observation Squadron , 35th Division, Missouri National Guard , in St. Louis. He was promoted to first lieutenant on December 7, 1925, and to captain in July 1926. In October 1925, Lindbergh was hired by the Robertson Aircraft Corporation (RAC) at the Lambert-St. Louis Flying Field in Anglum, Missouri, (where he had been working as a flight instructor) to lay out and then serve as chief pilot for

4293-524: The Canyon of Heroes to City Hall, where he was received by Mayor Jimmy Walker . A ticker-tape parade followed to Central Park Mall , where he was awarded the New York Medal for Valor at a ceremony hosted by New York Governor Al Smith and attended by a crowd of 200,000. Some 4,000,000 people saw Lindbergh that day. That evening, Lindbergh was accompanied by his mother and Mayor Walker when he

4452-520: The Caribbean , which he had earlier laid out as a consultant to Pan American Airways to be then flown under contract to the Post Office as Foreign Air Mail (FAM) routes 5 and 6. On 10 March 1929, Lindbergh flew an inaugural flight from Brownsville, Texas , to Mexico City via Tampico , in a Ford Trimotor airplane, carrying a load of U.S. mail. When a number of mail bags came up missing for

4611-620: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and aimed at removing the remaining influence of Leon Trotsky within the Soviet Union. The term great purge was popularized by the historian Robert Conquest in his 1968 book The Great Terror , whose title was an allusion to the French Revolution 's Reign of Terror . The purges were largely conducted by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which functioned as

4770-576: The Daily Mail prize for the first nonstop transatlantic flight . They left St. John's, Newfoundland , on June 14 , 1919, and arrived in Clifden, County Galway , Ireland the following day. Around the same time, French-born New York hotelier Raymond Orteig was approached by Augustus Post , secretary of the Aero Club of America, to put up a $ 25,000 (equivalent to $ 439,000 in 2023) award for

4929-602: The Distinguished Flying Cross and Medal of Honor , the highest U.S. military award. He also earned the highest French order of merit , the Legion of Honor . His achievement spurred significant global interest in both commercial aviation and air mail , which revolutionized the aviation industry worldwide (a phenomenon dubbed the " Lindbergh boom "), and he spent much time promoting these industries. Time magazine honored Lindbergh as its first Man of

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5088-703: The Distinguished Flying Cross . Lindbergh received the first award of this medal, but it violated the authorizing regulation. Coolidge's own executive order, published in March 1927, required recipients to perform their feats of airmanship "while participating in an aerial flight as part of the duties incident to such membership [in the Organized Reserves]", which Lindbergh failed to satisfy. Lindbergh flew from Washington, D.C., to New York City on June 13 , arriving in Lower Manhattan . He traveled up

5247-646: The Great Terror ( Russian : Большой террор , romanized :  Bol'shoy terror ), also known as the Year of '37 ( 37-й год , Tridtsat' sed'moy god ) and the Yezhovshchina ( Ежовщина [(j)ɪˈʐofɕːɪnə] , lit.   ' period of Yezhov ' ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. It sought to consolidate Joseph Stalin 's power over

5406-612: The Gulag labor camps . The NKVD targeted certain ethnic minorities such as the Volga Germans , and Soviet citizens of Polish origin, who were subjected to forced deportation and extreme repression. Throughout the purge, the NKVD sought to strengthen control over civilians through fear, and frequently used imprisonment, torture, violent interrogation, and executions during its mass operations . In 1938, Stalin reversed his stance on

5565-501: The Levasseur PL 8 seaplane L'Oiseau Blanc ; they disappeared somewhere in the Atlantic after last being seen crossing the west coast of Ireland . Financing the historic flight was a challenge due to Lindbergh's obscurity, but two St. Louis businessmen eventually obtained a $ 15,000 bank loan. Lindbergh contributed $ 2,000 (equivalent to $ 35,000 in 2023) of his own money from his salary as an air mail pilot and another $ 1,000

5724-468: The Pacific Theater as a civilian consultant and was unofficially credited with shooting down an enemy aircraft. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower restored his commission and promoted him to brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force Reserve . In his later years, he became a Pulitzer Prize -winning author, international explorer and environmentalist, helping to establish national parks in

5883-471: The Spirit before returning to the United States. On May 28, Lindbergh flew to Evere Aerodrome in Brussels , Belgium, circling the field three times for the cheering crowd and taxiing to a halt just after 3:00 PM, as a thousand children waved American flags. On his way to Evere, Lindbergh had met an escort of ten planes from the airport, who found him on course near Mons but had trouble keeping up as

6042-476: The Spirit from St. Louis to Washington, D.C., where it has been on public display at the Smithsonian Institution ever since. Over the previous 367 days, Lindbergh and the Spirit had logged 489 hours 28 minutes of flight time. A " Lindbergh boom " in aviation had begun. The volume of mail moving by air increased 50 percent within six months, applications for pilots' licenses tripled, and

6201-525: The Spirit made during their 7,800 mi (12,600 km) "Good Will Tour" of Latin America and the Caribbean between December 13 , 1927, and February 8 , 1928, and the only franked mail pieces that he ever flew in his iconic plane. Two weeks after his Latin American tour, Lindbergh piloted a series of special flights over his old CAM-2 route on February 20 and February 21 . Tens of thousands of self-addressed souvenir covers were sent in from all over

6360-516: The Spirit on May 29, where a crowd of 100,000 "mobbed" him. Before reaching the airfield he overflew London where crowds, some on roofs, "gazed at the flyer" and observers with "field glasses in the West End business district" watched him. About 50 minutes before he landed, the "roads leading toward Croydon airport were jammed." Flying into the airfield, Lindbergh "appeared on the horizon" at 5:50 PM accompanied by six British military planes, but

6519-497: The Spirit to be dismantled for shipment back to New York. On May 31, accompanied by an attache of the U.S. Embassy , Lindbergh visited British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin at 10 Downing Street and then motored to Buckingham Palace , where King George V received him as a guest and awarded him the British Air Force Cross . In anticipation of Lindbergh's visit to the palace, a crowd massed "hoping to get

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6678-400: The Spirit was averaging "about 100 miles an hour." On landing, Lindbergh was welcomed by military officers and prominent officials, including Belgian Prime Minister Henri Jaspar , who led the procession of Lindbergh's plane to a "platform where it was raised to the view of cheering thousands." "It was a splendid flight," Lindbergh declared, stating: "I enjoyed every minute of it. The motor

6837-440: The Spirit ; he was flying 90 miles per hour (140 km/h) at 10,000 feet (3,000 m), and was 500 miles (800 km) from Newfoundland. Eighteen hours into the flight, he was halfway to Paris, and while he had planned to celebrate at this point, he instead felt "only dread." Because Lindbergh flew through several time zones, dawn came earlier, at around 2:52 AM. He began to hallucinate about two hours later. At this point in

6996-777: The Trial of the Twenty-One , is the most famous of the Soviet show trials, because of persons involved and the scope of charges which tied together all loose threads from earlier trials. Meant to be the culmination of previous trials, it included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites", supposedly led by Nikolai Bukharin, the former chairman of the Communist International , former premier Alexei Rykov , Christian Rakovsky , Nikolai Krestinsky , and Genrikh Yagoda , recently disgraced head of

7155-504: The Tsarist regime , former members of political parties other than the communist party, etc.). They were to be executed or sent to Gulag prison camps extrajudicially, under the decisions of NKVD troikas. The following categories appear to have been on index-cards, catalogues of suspects assembled over the years by the NKVD and were systematically tracked down: "ex-kulaks" previously deported to " special settlements " in inhospitable parts of

7314-556: The United States Army Air Service there (and later at nearby Kelly Field ). Lindbergh had his most serious flying accident on March 5 , 1925, eight days before graduation, when a mid-air collision with another Army S.E.5 during aerial combat maneuvers forced him to bail out. Only 18 of the 104 cadets who started flight training a year earlier remained when Lindbergh graduated first overall in his class in March 1925, thereby earning his Army pilot's wings and

7473-546: The interior ministry and secret police of the USSR. Starting in 1936, the NKVD under chief Genrikh Yagoda began the removal of the central party leadership, Old Bolsheviks , government officials, and regional party bosses . Soviet politicians who opposed or criticized Stalin were removed from office and imprisoned or executed by the NKVD. Eventually, the purges were expanded to the Red Army and military high command, which had

7632-687: The "Good Will Tour", it included stops in Mexico (where he also met his future wife, Anne, the daughter of U.S. Ambassador Dwight Morrow ), Guatemala , British Honduras , El Salvador , Honduras , Nicaragua , Costa Rica , Panama , the Canal Zone , Colombia , Venezuela , St. Thomas , Puerto Rico , the Dominican Republic , Haiti , and Cuba , covering 9,390 miles (15,110 km) in just over 116 hours of flight time. A year and two days after it had made its first flight, Lindbergh flew

7791-706: The "commission" authorized by the Politburo and gave assurances that death sentences would not be carried out. After the trial, Stalin not only broke his promise to spare the defendants, he had most of their relatives arrested and shot. In May 1937, the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials , commonly known as the Dewey Commission, was set up in

7950-417: The Atlantic, three of which were from Col. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. , son of former President Theodore Roosevelt , who had written letters of introduction at Lindbergh's request. Lindbergh left the airfield around midnight and was driven through Paris to the ambassador's residence, stopping to visit the French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe ; after arriving at the residence, he slept for

8109-407: The English coast, that Lindbergh's plane had started across the English Channel . News soon spread across both "Europe and the United States that Lindbergh had been spotted over England," and a crowd started to form at Le Bourget Aerodrome as he neared Paris. At sunset, he flew over Cherbourg , on the French coast 200 miles (320 km) from Paris; it was around 2:52 PM New York time. Over

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8268-409: The Jenny). Lindbergh also "cracked up" this aircraft once when his engine failed shortly after takeoff in Pensacola, Florida , but again he managed to repair the damage himself. Following a few months of barnstorming through the South , the two pilots parted company in San Antonio , Texas, where Lindbergh reported to Brooks Field on March 19 , 1924 to begin a year of military flight training with

8427-406: The Moscow Trials to be frame-ups." In the second trial, Karl Radek testified that there was a "third organization separate from the cadres which had passed through [Trotsky's] school," as well as "semi-Trotskyites, quarter-Trotskyites, one-eighth-Trotskyites, people who helped us, not knowing of the terrorist organization but sympathizing with us, people who from liberalism, from a Fronde against

8586-428: The NKVD was the largest of this kind. The Polish operation claimed the largest number of the NKVD victims: 143,810 arrests and 111,091 executions according to records. Snyder estimates that at least eighty-five thousand of them were ethnic Poles. The remainder were 'suspected' of being Polish, without further inquiry. Poles comprised 12.5% of those who were killed during the Great Terror, while comprising only 0.4% of

8745-447: The NKVD and located as a rule on the outskirts of major cities. The "Kulak Operation" was the largest single campaign of repression in 1937–38, with 669,929 people arrested and 376,202 executed, more than half the total of known executions. A series of mass operations of the NKVD was carried out from 1937 through 1938 targeting specific nationalities within the Soviet Union, on the order of Nikolai Yezhov . The Polish Operation of

8904-400: The NKVD. Although an Opposition Bloc led by Trotsky and with zinovievites really existed, Pierre Broué asserts that Bukharin was not involved. Differently from Broué, one of his former allies, Jules Humbert-Droz , said in his memoirs that Bukharin told him that he formed a secret bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev in order to remove Stalin from leadership. The fact that Yagoda was one of

9063-501: The Nebraska Aircraft Corporation's flying school in Lincoln and flew for the first time on April 9 as a passenger in a two-seat Lincoln Standard "Tourabout" biplane trainer piloted by Otto Timm . A few days later, Lindbergh took his first formal flying lesson in that same aircraft, though he was never permitted to solo because he could not afford to post the requisite damage bond. To gain flight experience and earn money for further instruction, Lindbergh left Lincoln in June to spend

9222-456: The Party, gave us this help." By the "third organization," he meant the last remaining former opposition group called the Rightists , led by Bukharin, whom he implicated by saying: I feel guilty of one thing more: even after admitting my guilt and exposing the organisation, I stubbornly refused to give evidence about Bukharin. I knew that Bukharin's situation was just as hopeless as my own, because our guilt, if not juridically, then in essence,

9381-405: The Soviet Union and restore capitalism. These trials were highly publicized and extensively covered by the outside world, which was mesmerized by the spectacle of Lenin's closest associates confessing to most outrageous crimes and begging for death sentences: It is now known that the confessions were given only after great psychological pressure and torture had been applied to the defendants. From

9540-417: The Soviet economy in the late 1920s, veteran Bolsheviks no longer thought necessary the "temporary" wartime dictatorship, which had passed from Lenin to Stalin. Stalin's opponents inside the Communist Party chided him as undemocratic and lax on bureaucratic corruption. This opposition to current leadership may have accumulated substantial support among the working class by attacking the privileges and luxuries

9699-452: The Soviet government desired to put Trotsky on trial during the purge, his exile prevented this. Trotsky survived the purge, though he would be assassinated in 1940 by the NKVD on the orders of Stalin. Following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, a power vacuum opened in the Communist Party, the ruling party in the Soviet Union (USSR). Various established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. By 1928, Joseph Stalin,

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9858-634: The U.S. and protect certain endangered species and tribal people in both the Philippines and east Africa . After retiring in Maui , Lindbergh died in 1974. Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan , on February 4 , 1902, and spent most of his childhood in Little Falls, Minnesota , and Washington, D.C. He was the only child of Charles August Lindbergh ( birth name Carl Månsson), who had emigrated from Sweden to Melrose, Minnesota , as an infant, and Evangeline Lodge Land Lindbergh of Detroit. Lindbergh had three elder paternal half-sisters: Lillian, Edith, and Eva. The couple separated in 1909 when Lindbergh

10017-462: The US, One-storey America was first published in 1937, after Ilf's death, by the publishing house Farrar & Rinehart , which entitled the book Little Golden America . This name was invented by the publisher, despite the protests of the author – Evgeny Petrov and translator Charles Malamuth. According to the publisher, this title was supposed to remind readers of the previous book by Ilf and Petrov The Little Golden Calf , previously published in

10176-440: The US, and the younger Ivan Urgant followed the route described in the book (with a few variations, e.g. a trip to Las Vegas) and conducted interviews with locals. The two were accompanied by the American writer and radio journalist Brian Kahn from Montana. The series mixes excerpts and old photos from the book with current images of the same locations. The film compares the impressions of Ilf and Petrov with today's impressions of

10335-405: The United States and the USSR . This allowed the authors to freely move around the country and get acquainted with the life of different layers of American society. The authors lived in America for ten weeks. During this time, they crossed the country twice from end to end. Ilf and Petrov did not speak English and sometimes used the help of Russian-speaking guides. Ilf took many pictures throughout

10494-656: The United States by supporters of Trotsky, to establish the truth about the trials. The commission was headed by the noted American philosopher and educator John Dewey . Although the hearings were obviously conducted with a view to proving Trotsky's innocence, they brought to light evidence which established that some of the specific charges made at the trials could not be true. For example, Georgy Pyatakov testified that he had flown to Oslo in December 1935 to "receive terrorist instructions" from Trotsky. The Dewey Commission established that no such flight had taken place. Another defendant, Ivan Smirnov , confessed to taking part in

10653-457: The United States. Ilf and Petrov's travelogue was criticized in the Soviet Union because it was not party enough and praised many aspects of American life. "One-Story America" was a hit with American readers and received a lot of praise in the press, including: Channel One Russia created a 16-part mini-series in 2008. The goal was not to film the book, but to show viewers what America is today. Two journalists, Vladimir Posner , who grew up in

10812-439: The Year in 1928, President Herbert Hoover appointed him to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1929, and he received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1930. In 1931, he and French surgeon Alexis Carrel began work on inventing the first perfusion pump , a device credited with making future heart surgeries and organ transplantation possible. On March 1, 1932, Lindbergh's first-born infant child, Charles Jr.,

10971-410: The accounts of former OGPU officer Alexander Orlov and others, the methods used to extract the confessions are known: such tortures as repeated beatings, simulated drownings, making prisoners stand or go without sleep for days on end, and threats to arrest and execute the prisoners' families. For example, Kamenev's teenage son was arrested and charged with terrorism. After months of such interrogation,

11130-485: The accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence" in a trial that was based solely on confessions. He finished his last plea with the words: [T]he monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable especially in the new stage of struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R. become clear to all. Romain Rolland and others wrote to Stalin seeking clemency for Bukharin, but all

11289-471: The accused showed the speed at which the purges were consuming their own. It was now alleged that Bukharin and others sought to assassinate Lenin and Stalin from 1918, murder Maxim Gorky by poison, partition the USSR and hand its territories to Germany, Japan, and Great Britain, and other charges. Even previously sympathetic observers who had accepted the earlier trials found it more difficult to accept these new allegations as they became ever more absurd, and

11448-487: The assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, at a time when he had already been in prison for a year. The Dewey Commission later published its findings in a 422-page book titled Not Guilty . Its conclusions asserted the innocence of all those condemned in the Moscow Trials. In its summary, the commission wrote Independent of extrinsic evidence, the Commission finds: The commission concluded: "We therefore find

11607-517: The balcony of the U.S. embassy , responding "briefly and modestly" to the calls of the crowd. The French Foreign Office flew the American flag, the first time it had saluted someone who was not a head of state. At the Élysée Palace , French President Gaston Doumergue bestowed the Légion d'honneur on Lindbergh, pinning the award on his lapel, with Ambassador Herrick present for the occasion. Lindbergh also made flights to Belgium and Britain in

11766-524: The basis of denunciations or because they were related to, were friends with or knew people already arrested. Engineers, peasants, railwaymen, and other types of workers were arrested during the "Kulak Operation" based on the fact that they worked for or near important strategic sites and factories where work accidents had occurred due to "frantic rhythms and plans". During this period the NKVD reopened these cases and relabeled them as "sabotage" or "wrecking." The Orthodox clergy , including active parishioners,

11925-857: The book for $ 25 each, all of which were purchased before publication. "WE" was soon translated into most major languages and sold more than 650,000 copies in the first year, earning Lindbergh more than $ 250,000. Its success was considerably aided by Lindbergh's three-month, 22,350-mile (35,970 km) tour of the United States in the Spirit on behalf of the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics . Between July 20 and October 23 , 1927, Lindbergh visited 82 cities in all 48 states, rode 1,290 mi (2,080 km) in parades, and delivered 147 speeches before 30 million people. Lindbergh then toured 16 Latin American countries between December 13 , 1927, and February 8 , 1928. Dubbed

12084-411: The book, restored from the original source, was published, including previously unpublished materials from the personal archive of Alexandra Ilyinichna Ilf (daughter of I. Ilf). It first published the letters that Ilf sent to his wife and daughter during the trip, and photographs taken by him in the United States. Together with Petrov's letters, they represent a kind of travel diary and naturally complement

12243-554: The book. In the 2000s, several American universities successfully held exhibitions of Ilf's "American photographs", and in New York a translation of the 1936 "Ogoniok" publication with numerous Ilf photographs were published as Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers ( ISBN   978-1616892524 ). One-Story America has been repeatedly published in Bulgarian, English, Spanish, Czech, Serbian, Romanian, French, Italian and other languages. In

12402-522: The cockpit, and carried him around above their heads for "nearly half an hour." Some minor damage was done to the Spirit by souvenir hunters before pilot and plane reached the safety of a nearby hangar with the aid of French military fliers, soldiers, and police. The Times reported that before the police could intervene the "souvenir mad" spectators "stripped the plane of everything which could be taken off," and were cutting off pieces of linen when "a squad of soldiers with fixed bayonets quickly surrounded"

12561-614: The country ( Siberia , the Urals , Kazakhstan, and the Far North ), former tsarist civil servants, former officers of the White Army , participants in peasant rebellions, members of the clergy, persons deprived of voting rights, former members of non-Bolshevik parties, ordinary criminals, like thieves, known to the police and various other "socially harmful elements". However, a large number of people were arrested at random in sweeps, on

12720-695: The country as threatened from within by fascist spies. From the October Revolution onward, Lenin had used repression against perceived and legitimate enemies of the Bolsheviks as a systematic method of instilling fear and facilitating control over the population in a campaign called the Red Terror . As the Russian Civil War drew to a close, this campaign was relaxed although the secret police did remain active. From 1924 to 1928,

12879-429: The country's population but comprising 12.5% of those executed. Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, author, and military officer. On May 20–21, 1927, he made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris , a distance of 3,600 miles (5,800 km), flying alone for 33.5 hours in the first solo transatlantic flight. His aircraft,

13038-433: The dark hours of his flight". However, as Berg wrote in 1998, Putnam's chose the title without "Lindbergh's knowledge or approval," and Lindbergh would "forever complain about it, that his use of 'we' meant him and his backers, not him and his plane, as the press had people believing"; nonetheless, as Berg remarked, "his frequent unconscious use of the phrase suggested otherwise." Putnam's sold special autographed copies of

13197-407: The defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion. Zinoviev and Kamenev demanded, as a condition for "confessing", a direct guarantee from the Politburo that their lives and that of their families and followers would be spared. This offer was accepted, but when they were taken to the alleged Politburo meeting, only Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov , and Yezhov were present. Stalin claimed that they were

13356-413: The early morning of Friday, May 20 , 1927, Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island . His destination, Le Bourget Aerodrome , was about 7 miles (11 km) outside Paris and 3,610 miles (5,810 km) from his starting point. He was "too busy the night before to lie down for more than a couple of hours," and "had been unable [to] sleep." It rained the morning of his takeoff, but as

13515-630: The eastern coast of Cape Breton Island was below; he struggled to stay awake, even though it was "only the afternoon of the first day." At 5:52 PM, he was flying along the Newfoundland coast, and passed St. John's at 7:15 PM. On its May 21 front page, The New York Times ran a special cable from the prior evening: "Captain Lindbergh's airplane passed over St. John's at 8:15 o'clock tonight [7:15 New York Daylight Saving Time]...was seen by hundreds and disappeared seaward, heading for Ireland...It

13674-534: The estimated number of "kulaks" and "criminals" in their districts. These individuals were to be arrested and executed, or sent to the gulag camps. The party chiefs complied and produced these lists within days, with figures which roughly corresponded to the individuals who were already under secret police surveillance. On 30 July 1937, the NKVD Order No. 00447 was issued, directed against "ex-kulaks" and other "anti-Soviet elements" (such as former officials of

13833-578: The far end of the field "by about twenty feet (6.1 m) with a fair reserve of flying speed". At 8:52 AM, an hour after takeoff, Lindbergh was flying at an altitude of 500 feet (150 m) over Rhode Island , following an uneventful passage‍—‌aside from some turbulence‍—‌over Long Island Sound and Connecticut . By 9:52 AM, he had passed Boston and was flying with Cape Cod to his right, with an airspeed of 107 miles per hour (172 km/h) and altitude of 150 feet (46 m); about an hour later he began to feel tired, even though only

13992-689: The film authors. The film crew traveled 17,000 km through America, 25 states and 50 cities in 52 days. The route ran through New York, Cleveland, Detroit, Peoria, Colorado Springs, Gallup, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, El Paso, Houston, New Orleans, Memphis, Washington, DC back to New York. Peoria, Illinois Oklahoma City (59. Highway Patrol Academy in Oklahoma) Grand Canyon El Paso , Texas Norfolk , Virginia ( Norfolk Naval Base ) Great Purge The Great Purge , or

14151-805: The first successful nonstop transatlantic flight specifically between New York City and Paris within five years after its establishment. When that time limit lapsed in 1924 without a serious attempt, Orteig renewed the offer for another five years, this time attracting a number of well-known, highly experienced, and well-financed contenders ‍—‌none of whom was successful. On September 21 , 1926, World War   I French flying ace René Fonck 's Sikorsky S-35 crashed on takeoff from Roosevelt Field in New York. U.S. Naval aviators Noel Davis and Stanton H. Wooster were killed at Langley Field , Virginia, on April 26 , 1927, while testing their Keystone Pathfinder . On May 8 French war heroes Charles Nungesser and François Coli departed Paris – Le Bourget Airport in

14310-412: The first three into fervent anti-communists eventually. To them, Bukharin's confession symbolized the depredations of communism, which not only destroyed its sons but also conscripted them in self-destruction and individual abnegation. On the first day of trial, Krestinsky caused a sensation when he repudiated his written confession and pleaded not guilty to all the charges. However, he changed his plea

14469-533: The first time in about 60 hours. Lindbergh's flight was certified by the National Aeronautic Association of the United States based on the readings from a sealed barograph placed in the Spirit . Lindbergh received unprecedented acclaim after his historic flight. In the words of biographer A. Scott Berg , people were "behaving as though Lindbergh had walked on water, not flown over it". The New York Times printed an above

14628-511: The first time in the Jenny. After spending another week or so at the field to "practice" (thereby acquiring five hours of "pilot in command" time), Lindbergh took off from Americus for Montgomery, Alabama , some 140 miles (230 km) to the west, for his first solo cross-country flight. He went on to spend much of the remainder of 1923 engaged in almost nonstop barnstorming under the name "Daredevil Lindbergh", this time flying in his "own ship" as

14787-410: The flight, he "continually" fell asleep, awakening "seconds, possibly minutes, later." But after "flying for hours in or above the fog," the weather finally began to clear. 7:52 AM marked twenty-four hours in the air for Lindbergh and he did not feel as tired by this point. At around 9:52 AM New York time, or twenty-seven hours after he left Roosevelt Field, Lindbergh saw "porpoises and fishing boats,"

14946-596: The fold , page-wide headline: "Lindbergh Does It!" and his mother's house in Detroit was surrounded by a crowd reported at nearly a thousand. He became "an international celebrity, with invitations pouring in for him to visit European countries," and he "received marriage proposals, invitations to visit cities across the nation, and thousands of gifts, letters, and endorsement requests." At least "200 songs were written" in tribute to him and his flight. " Lucky Lindy! ", written and composed by L. Wolfe Gilbert and Abel Baer ,

15105-483: The human cost of the first five-year plan and the collectivization of agriculture . From 1930 onwards, the Party and police officials feared the "social disorder" caused by the upheavals of forced collectivization of peasants and the resulting famine of 1932–1933 , as well as the massive and uncontrolled migration of millions of peasants into cities. The threat of war heightened Stalin's and generally Soviet perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as

15264-438: The ideal romance was stable and long-term, with a woman with keen intellect, good health, and strong genes, his "experience in breeding animals on our farm [having taught him] the importance of good heredity". Anne Morrow Lindbergh was the daughter of Dwight Morrow , who, as a partner at J.P. Morgan & Co. , had acted as financial adviser to Lindbergh. He was also the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico in 1927. Invited by Morrow on

15423-763: The impact Lindbergh had on people. Even the first walk on the moon doesn't come close. The twenties was such an innocent time, and people were still so religious—I think they felt like this man was sent by God to do this. And it changed aviation forever because all of a sudden the Wall Streeters were banging on doors looking for airplanes to invest in. We'd been standing on our heads trying to get them to notice us but after Lindbergh, suddenly everyone wanted to fly, and there weren't enough planes to carry them. Barely two months after Lindbergh arrived in Paris, G. P. Putnam's Sons published his 318-page autobiography "WE" , which

15582-518: The journey, and the authors produced a photo essay entitled "American Photographs", published in the popular Soviet magazine Ogoniok — a Soviet analogue to Time Magazine . Work on "One-Story America" began in the United States. The essay "Normandy", which opens the book, was written by Ilf and Petrov shortly after their arrival in America. Under the heading "The Road to New York," it appeared with minor abbreviations in Pravda on November 24, 1935. During

15741-466: The kulaks (i.e., wealthy peasants that owned farmland) in a policy called dekulakization . The kulaks responded by destroying crop yields and other acts of sabotage against the Soviet government. The food shortage led to a mass famine across the USSR and slowed the Five Year Plan. A distinctive feature of the Great Purge was that, for the first time, members of the ruling party were included on

15900-556: The late stages of the Purge rather than deliberate discrimination in sentencing). The wives and children of those arrested and executed were dealt with by the NKVD Order No. 00486 . The women were sentenced to forced labour for 5 or 10 years. Their minor children were put in orphanages. All possessions were confiscated. Extended families were purposely left with nothing to live on, which usually sealed their fate as well, affecting up to 200,000–250,000 people of Polish background depending on

16059-427: The leadership of Nikolai Yezhov , hence the name Yezhovshchina . The campaigns were carried out according to the general line of the party , often by direct orders of the politburo headed by Stalin. Hundreds of thousands of people were accused of various political crimes (espionage, wrecking , sabotage , anti-Soviet agitation , conspiracies to prepare uprisings and coups). They were executed by shooting or sent to

16218-472: The leading defendants were executed except Rakovsky and two others (who were killed in NKVD prisoner massacres in 1941). Despite the promise to spare his family, Bukharin's wife, Anna Larina , was sent to a labor camp, but she survived to see her husband posthumously rehabilitated a half-century later by the Soviet state under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988. On 2 July 1937, in a top secret order to regional Party and NKVD chiefs Stalin instructed them to produce

16377-485: The long flight over featureless ocean. On arriving at Paris, Lindbergh "circled the Eiffel Tower" before flying to the airfield. He flew over the crowd at Le Bourget Aerodrome at 10:16 and landed at 10:22 PM on Saturday, May 21 , on the far side of the field and "nearly half a mile from the crowd," as reported by The New York Times . The airfield was not marked on his map and Lindbergh knew only that it

16536-474: The mass repression – including incarceration in the Gulag system – dropped significantly. By 1929, Stalin had defeated his political opponents and gained full control over the party. He organized a committee to begin the process of industrialization of the Soviet Union. Backlash against industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture escalated, which prompted Stalin to increase police presence in rural areas. Soviet authorities increased repression against

16695-444: The massive crowd "swept over the guard lines" and forced him to circle the airfield "while police battled the crowd," and "not until 10 minutes later had they cleared a space large enough" for him to land. Police reserves were sent to the airfield in "large numbers," but it was not enough to contain the multitude. As the plane came to a stop, the crowd "waved American flags, smashed fences and knocked down police," while Lindbergh himself

16854-523: The middle of his sophomore year. From an early age, Lindbergh had exhibited an interest in the mechanics of motorized transportation, including his family's Saxon Six automobile, and later his Excelsior motorbike. By the time that he started college as a mechanical engineering student, he had also become fascinated with flying, though he "had never been close enough to a plane to touch it". After quitting college in February 1922, Lindbergh enrolled at

17013-422: The moderates. The 1934 Party Congress elected Kirov to the central committee with only three votes against, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 votes against. After Kirov's assassination, the NKVD charged the ever-growing group of former oppositionists with Kirov's murder as well as a growing list of other offenses, including treason, terrorism, sabotage, and espionage. Another justification for

17172-524: The new form of Party organization, the Politburo, and Stalin in particular, were the sole dispensers of ideology. This required the elimination of all Marxists with different views, especially those among the prestigious "old guard" of revolutionaries. As the purges began, the government (through the NKVD) shot Bolshevik heroes, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Béla Kun , as well as the majority of Lenin's Politburo, for disagreements in policy. The NKVD attacked

17331-407: The new route. On two occasions, combinations of bad weather, equipment failure, and fuel exhaustion forced him to bail out on night approach to Chicago ; both times he reached the ground without serious injury. In mid-February 1927 he left for San Diego , California, to oversee design and construction of the Spirit of St. Louis . In 1919, British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown won

17490-643: The newly designated 278-mile (447 km) Contract Air Mail Route #2 (CAM-2) to provide service between St. Louis and Chicago (Maywood Field) with intermediate stops in Springfield and Peoria, Illinois . Lindbergh and three other RAC pilots flew the mail over CAM-2 in a fleet of four modified war-surplus de Havilland DH-4s . On April 13 , 1926, Lindbergh executed the United States Post Office Department 's Oath of Mail Messengers, and two days later he opened service on

17649-468: The newspaper, "Hours and People" (1937). During Soviet times, the book was reprinted in 1947, 1961 and 1966, but in these editions its text was subjected to political censorship. Thus, references to Stalin and other political figures disappeared from the text. The text underwent an especially large number of edits when it was published in the Collected Works of Ilf and Petrov in 1961. For example,

17808-660: The next day after "special measures", which dislocated his left shoulder among other things. Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured, but it is now known that his interrogators were given the order "beating permitted", and were under great pressure to extract confession out of the "star" defendant. Bukharin initially held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son, combined with "methods of physical influence" wore him down. But when he read his confession amended and corrected personally by Stalin, he withdrew his whole confession. The examination started all over again, with

17967-516: The next few months barnstorming across Nebraska , Kansas , Colorado , Wyoming , and Montana as a wing walker and parachutist . He also briefly worked as an airplane mechanic at the Billings, Montana, municipal airport . Lindbergh left flying with the onset of winter and returned to his father's home in Minnesota. His return to the air and his first solo flight did not come until half

18126-534: The number of planes quadrupled. President Herbert Hoover appointed Lindbergh to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics . Lindbergh and Pan American World Airways head Juan Trippe were interested in developing an air route across Alaska and Siberia to China and Japan. In the summer of 1931, with Trippe's support, Lindbergh and his wife flew from Long Island to Nome, Alaska , and from there to Siberia, Japan and China. The flight

18285-403: The party's General Secretary, had triumphed over his opponents and gained control of the party. Initially, Stalin's leadership was widely accepted; his main political adversary, Trotsky, was forced into exile in 1929, and Stalin's doctrine of " socialism in one country " became enshrined party policy. However, in the early 1930s, party officials began to lose faith in his leadership, largely due to

18444-465: The party. In this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, the popular high-ranking official Sergei Kirov was assassinated . The assassination, in December 1934, led to an investigation that revealed a network of party members supposedly working against Stalin, including several of Stalin's rivals. Many of those arrested after Kirov's murder, high-ranking party officials among them, also confessed plans to kill Stalin himself. The validity of these confessions

18603-576: The passport regime", etc. were also dealt with in a summary way. In Moscow, for example, nearly one third of the 20,765 persons executed on the Butovo firing range were charged with a non-political criminal offence. To carry out the mass arrests, the 25,000 officers of the State Security personnel of NKVD were complemented with units of ordinary police, and Komsomol ( Young Communist League ) and civilian Communist Party members. Seeking to fulfill

18762-532: The pilot. A few weeks after leaving Americus, he made his first night flight near Lake Village, Arkansas . While Lindbergh was barnstorming in Lone Rock, Wisconsin , on two occasions he flew a local physician across the Wisconsin River to emergency calls that were otherwise unreachable because of flooding. He broke his propeller several times while landing, and on June 3 , 1923 he was grounded for

18921-408: The plane "was wheeled into position on the runway," the rain ceased and light began to break through the "low-hanging clouds." A crowd variously described as "nearly a thousand" or "several thousand" assembled to see Lindbergh off. For its transatlantic flight, the Spirit was loaded with 450 U.S. gallons (1,700 liters) of fuel that was filtered repeatedly to avoid fuel line blockage. The fuel load

19080-423: The plane, providing guard as it was "wheeled into a shed." Lindbergh met the U.S. Ambassador to France , Myron T. Herrick , across Le Bourget field in a "little room with a few chairs and an army cot." The lights in the room were turned off to conceal his presence from the frenzied crowd, which "surged madly" trying to find him. Lindbergh shook hands with Herrick and handed him several letters he had carried across

19239-476: The population. Overall, national minorities targeted in these campaigns composed 36% of the victims of the Great Purge, despite being only 1.6% of the Soviet Union's population. 74% of ethnic minorities arrested during the Great Purge were executed while those sentenced during the Kulak Operation had only a 50% chance of being executed, (though this may have been due to the Gulag camp's lack of space in

19398-404: The potential source of an uprising in case of invasion. Stalin began to plan for the preventive elimination of such potential recruits for a mythical "fifth column of wreckers, terrorists and spies." The term " purge " in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression purge of the Party ranks . In 1933, for example, the Party expelled some 400,000 people. But from 1936 until 1953,

19557-464: The publishing house Soviet Writer. In the same year the book was reprinted in the Russian cities of Ivanovo , Khabarovsk , Smolensk . "One-Story America" was written rather quickly – in the summer months of 1936. While the book was being written, Pravda published five more essays from it: The first edition of the book was supposed to feature Ilf's photographs, but for reasons that remain unknown it

19716-567: The purge expanded to include almost every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin and Kalinin . No other crime of the Stalin years so captivated Western intellectuals as the trial and execution of Bukharin, who was a Marxist theorist of international standing. For some prominent communists such as Bertram Wolfe , Jay Lovestone , Arthur Koestler , and Heinrich Brandler , the Bukharin trial marked their final break with communism, and even turned

19875-399: The purge was to remove any possible "fifth column" in case of a war. Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich , participants in the repression as members of the Politburo, maintained this justification throughout the purge; they each signed many death lists. Stalin believed war was imminent, threatened both by an explicitly hostile Germany and an expansionist Japan. The Soviet press portrayed

20034-513: The purges, criticized the NKVD for carrying out mass executions, and oversaw the execution of Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov , who headed the NKVD during the purge years. Scholars estimate the death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) to be roughly 700,000-1.2 million. Despite the end of the Great Purge, the widespread surveillance and atmosphere of mistrust continued for decades. Similar purges took place in Mongolia and Xinjiang . While

20193-419: The quotas, the police rounded up people in markets and train stations, with the purpose of arresting "social outcasts". Local units of the NKVD, in order to meet their "casework minimums" and force confessions out of arrestees worked long uninterrupted shifts during which they interrogated, tortured and beat the prisoners. In many cases those arrested were forced to sign blank pages which were later filled in with

20352-401: The same time, the authors admired American roads and excellent service, work ethic, cleanliness and a clear organization in everyday life and at work. From "One-Story America" the Soviet reader first learned about publicity, life on credit and the ideology of consumption (In the chapter "Mr. Ripley's Electric House"). American impressions were explained by the authors in the fiction section of

20511-536: The several decorations authorized by Federal law will be awarded for the same act of heroism or extraordinary achievement" (Lindbergh was recognized for the same act with both the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Flying Cross). The statute authorizing the award was also criticized for apparently violating procedure; House legislators reportedly neglected to have their votes counted. Lindbergh

20670-446: The size of their families. National operations of the NKVD were conducted on a quota system using album procedure . The officials were mandated to arrest and execute a specific number of so-called "counter-revolutionaries", compiled by administration using various statistics but also telephone books with names sounding non-Russian. The Polish Operation of the NKVD served as a model for a series of similar NKVD secret decrees targeting

20829-418: The state offered to its high-paid elite. The Ryutin affair seemed to vindicate Stalin's suspicions. Ryutin was working with the even larger secret Opposition Bloc in which Leon Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev participated, and which later led to both of their deaths. Stalin enforced a ban on party factions and banned those party members who had opposed him, effectively ending democratic centralism . In

20988-577: The supporters, friends, and family of these "heretical" Marxists, whether they lived in Russia or not. The NKVD nearly annihilated Trotsky's family before killing him in Mexico; the NKVD agent Ramón Mercader was part of an assassination task force put together by Special Agent Pavel Sudoplatov , under the personal orders of Stalin. By 1934, several of Stalin's rivals, such as Trotsky, began calling for Stalin's removal and attempted to break his control over

21147-575: The sympathetic mention of Charles Lindbergh 's move from America to Europe after the abduction and murder of his son disappeared from the text, which was probably due to the subsequent friendly relationship of Lindbergh with Nazi German leaders, including Hermann Göring , who awarded Lindbergh the Nazi German decoration Commander Cross of the Order of the German Eagle. In 2003, a new edition of

21306-459: The term changed its meaning, because being expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment, and often execution. The political purge was primarily an effort by Stalin to eliminate challenge from past and potential opposition groups, including the left and right wings led by Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin , respectively. Following the Civil War and reconstruction of

21465-520: The trip to America. Four people (both authors and the Adams married couple from New York ) bought a brand new Ford with a "noble mouse color" and crossed America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and back in two months (late 1935-early 1936). The authors: The authors criticized the standard life of Americans, their intellectual passivity, especially young people, and their gullibility. At

21624-472: The world, so at each stop Lindbergh switched to another of the three planes he and his fellow CAM-2 pilots had used, so it could be said that each cover had been flown by him. The covers were then backstamped and returned to their senders as a promotion of the air mail service. In 1929–1931, Lindbergh carried much smaller numbers of souvenir covers on the first flights over routes in Latin America and

21783-412: The writers' stay in America, Pravda also published their essay "American Encounters" (January 5, 1936), which in the book concludes the 25th chapter, "The Desert". They returned to Moscow in early February 1936 and announced in an interview with a correspondent for Literaturnaya Gazeta that they would write a book about America. Ilf and Petrov published their first brief notes about the trip in 1936 in

21942-499: Was 3:00 PM. Flying over Dingle Bay, the Spirit was "2.5 hours ahead of schedule and less than 3 miles (5 km) off course." Lindbergh had navigated "almost precisely to the coastal point he had marked on his chart." He wanted to reach the French coast in daylight, so increased his speed to 110 miles per hour (180 km/h). The English coast appeared ahead of him, and he was "now wide awake." A report came from Plymouth , on

22101-504: Was a Nazi sympathizer, although Lindbergh never publicly stated support for the Nazis and condemned them several times in both his public speeches and personal diary. However, he supported the isolationist America First Committee and resigned from the U.S. Army Air Corps in April 1941 after President Franklin Roosevelt publicly rebuked him for his views. In September 1941, Lindbergh gave

22260-475: Was a thousand pounds heavier than any the Spirit had lifted during a test flight, and the fully loaded airplane weighed 5,200 pounds (2,400 kg; 2.6 short tons). With takeoff hampered by a muddy, rain-soaked runway, the plane was "helped by men pushing at the wing struts," with the last man leaving the wings only one hundred yards (90 m) down the runway. The Spirit gained speed very slowly during its 7:52   AM takeoff, but cleared telephone lines at

22419-487: Was carried out with a Lockheed Model 8 Sirius named Tingmissartoq . The route was not available for commercial service until after World War   II, as prewar aircraft lacked the range to fly Alaska to Japan nonstop, and the United States had not officially recognized the Soviet government. In China they volunteered to help in disaster investigation and relief efforts for the Central China flood of 1931 . This

22578-429: Was described as "grinning and serene" amid the "seething" crowd. The United Press reported that a "man's leg was broken in the crush," and another man fell from atop a hangar and suffered internal injuries. English officials were reportedly "surprised" by the enthusiasm of the welcome. A limousine pulled near the Spirit , escorting Lindbergh to a tower on the field where he responded to the cheering crowd. "All I can say

22737-442: Was donated by RAC. The total of $ 18,000 was far less than what was available to Lindbergh's rivals. The group tried to buy an "off-the-peg" single or multiengine monoplane from Wright Aeronautical , then Travel Air , and finally the newly formed Columbia Aircraft Corporation , but all insisted on selecting the pilot as a condition of sale. Finally the much smaller Ryan Aircraft Company of San Diego agreed to design and build

22896-412: Was finished on May 21 itself, and was "performed to great acclaim in several Manhattan clubs" that night. After landing, Lindbergh was eager to embark on a tour of Europe. As he noted in a speech a few weeks afterward, his flight marked the first time he "had ever been abroad," and he "landed with the expectancy, and the hope, of being able to see Europe." The morning after landing, Lindbergh appeared in

23055-427: Was flying at 10,000 feet (3,000 m). A towering thunderhead stood in front of him, and he flew into the cloud, but turned back after he noticed ice forming on the plane. While inside the cloud, Lindbergh "thrust a bare hand through the cockpit window," and felt the "sting of ice particles." After returning to open sky, he "curved back to his course." At 11:52 PM, Lindbergh was in warmer air, and no ice remained on

23214-425: Was flying quite low between the hills near St. John's." The Times also observed that Lindbergh was "following the track of Hawker and Greeve and also of Alcock and Brown ". Stars appeared as night fell around 8:00 PM. The sea became obscured by fog, prompting Lindbergh to climb "from an altitude of 800 feet (240 m) to 7,500 feet (2,300 m) to stay above the quickly-rising cloud." An hour later, he

23373-642: Was honored as the first Time magazine Man of the Year (now called "Person of the Year") when he appeared on that magazine's cover at age 25 on January 2 , 1928; he remained the youngest Time Person of the Year until Greta Thunberg in 2019. The winner of the 1930 Best Woman Aviator of the Year Award, Elinor Smith Sullivan , said that before Lindbergh's flight: People seemed to think we [aviators] were from outer space or something. But after Charles Lindbergh's flight, we could do no wrong. It's hard to describe

23532-435: Was in written confession and refuse to go any further. The result was a curious mix of fulsome confessions (of being a "degenerate fascist" working for "restoration of capitalism") and subtle criticisms of the trial. One observer noted that after disproving several charges against him, Bukharin "proceeded to demolish or rather showed he could very easily demolish the whole case." He continued by saying that "the confession of

23691-574: Was kidnapped and murdered in what the American media called the " crime of the century ". The case prompted the U.S. to establish kidnapping as a federal crime if a kidnapper crosses state lines with a victim. By late 1935, the press and hysteria surrounding the case had driven the Lindbergh family into exile in Europe, from where they returned in 1939. In the months before the United States entered World War II , Lindbergh's non-interventionist stance and statements about Jews and race led some to believe he

23850-545: Was later documented in Anne's book North to the Orient . Lindbergh used his world fame to promote air mail service. For example, at the request of Basil L. Rowe, the owner of West Indian Aerial Express (and later Pan Am 's chief pilot), in February, 1928, he carried some 3,000 pieces of special souvenir mail between Santo Domingo, Dominican Repulic ; Port-au-Prince, Haiti ; and Havana, Cuba ‍—‌the last three stops he and

24009-414: Was nearly annihilated: 85% of the 35,000 members of the clergy were arrested. Particularly vulnerable to repression were also the so-called "special settlers" ( spetzpereselentsy ) who were under permanent police surveillance and constituted a huge pool of potential "enemies" to draw on. At least 100,000 of them were arrested in the course of the Great Terror. Common criminals such as thieves, "violators of

24168-412: Was one of the most important slogans during the ambitious industrialization of the Soviet Union. Given the political climate in the Soviet Union in 1937 when the book was published, with the onset of Great Purge , it is surprising that a version of a book that lovingly satirizes the United States was published. Ilf and Petrov traveled across the Great Depression -era United States. On October 7, 1935,

24327-705: Was promoted to the rank of colonel in the Air Corps of the Officers Reserve Corps of the U.S. Army . On December 14 , 1927, a Special Act of Congress awarded Lindbergh the Medal of Honor , despite the fact that it was almost always awarded for heroism in combat. It was presented to Lindbergh by President Coolidge at the White House on March 21 , 1928. The medal contradicted Coolidge's earlier executive order directing that "not more than one of

24486-441: Was published without any illustrations. Both the photo essay and the book document their adventures with their characteristic humor and playfulness. Notably, Ilf and Petrov were not afraid to praise many aspects of the American lifestyle in these works. Ilf died of tuberculosis soon after his return (April 1937) just as the first edition of the book appeared in print in 1937. The first signs of his tuberculosis became apparent during

24645-538: Was seven years old. His father, a U.S. Congressman from 1907 to 1917, was one of the few congressmen to oppose the entry of the U.S. into World War I (although his congressional term ended one month before the House of Representatives voted to declare war on Germany ). Lindbergh's mother was a chemistry teacher at Cass Technical High School in Detroit and later at Little Falls High School , from which her son graduated on June 5 , 1918. Lindbergh attended more than

24804-419: Was some seven miles northeast of the city; he initially mistook it for some large industrial complex because of the bright lights spreading out in all directions‍—‌in fact the headlights of tens of thousands of spectators' cars caught in "the largest traffic jam in Paris history" in their attempt to be present for Lindbergh's landing. A crowd estimated at 150,000 stormed the field, dragged Lindbergh out of

24963-433: Was the first of 15 books he eventually wrote or to which he made significant contributions. The company was run by aviation enthusiast George P. Putnam . The dustjacket notes said that Lindbergh wanted to share the "story of his life and his transatlantic flight together with his views on the future of aviation", and that "WE" referred to the "spiritual partnership" that had developed "between himself and his airplane during

25122-577: Was the guest of honor at a 500-guest banquet and dance held at Clarence MacKay 's Long Island estate, Harbor Hill . The following night, Lindbergh was honored with a grand banquet at the Hotel Commodore given by the Mayor's Committee on Receptions of the City of New York and attended by some 3,700 people. He was officially awarded the check for the prize on June 16 . On July 18, 1927, Lindbergh

25281-472: Was the same. But we are close friends, and intellectual friendship is stronger than other friendships. I knew that Bukharin was in the same state of upheaval as myself. That is why I did not want to deliver him bound hand and foot to the People's Commissariat of Home Affairs. Just as in relation to our other cadres, I wanted Bukharin himself to lay down his arms. The third and final trial, in March 1938, known as

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