Thomas Sgovio
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Thomas Sgovio (7 October 1916 – 3 July 1997) was an American
artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...
, ex-
Communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...
, and former inmate of a
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
GULAG The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
camp in
Kolyma Kolyma (, ) or Kolyma Krai () is a historical region in the Russian Far East that includes the basin of Kolyma River and the northern shores of the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as the Kolyma Mountains (the watershed of the two). It is bounded to ...
. His father was an
Italian American Italian Americans () are Americans who have full or partial Italians, Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeastern United States, Northeast and industrial Midwestern United States, Midwestern ...
communist, deported by the US authorities to the
USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
because of his political activities.


Biography

He was born in
Buffalo, New York Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...
on 7 October 1916. Sgovio moved to the USSR at the age of 19 with his father Joseph "...who the United States deported as a communist agitator in 1935." On arrival in the USSR he gave up his US passport. He became disillusioned after three years living in Moscow, tried to reclaim his passport at the US embassy there and was arrested by the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
on 12 March 1938 as he left the embassy. After his arrest, he was first taken to Moscow's Lubyanka Prison and later transported to
Taganka Prison Taganka Prison (Russian: Таганская тюрьма) was built in Moscow in 1804 by Alexander I of Russia, Alexander I, emperor of Russia.Katrina Marie"Taganka: The Haunts of Intelligentsia and Blue-Collar Grit"''Passport Moscow''. Retrieved D ...
. After a perfunctory and routine inquiry in which the Soviet authorities seem mainly to have been concerned with his attendance at the embassy, he was sentenced by a
NKVD troika NKVD troika or Special troika (), in Soviet history, were the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD which would later be the beginning of the KGB) made up of three officials who issued sentences to people after simplified, speedy inve ...
of three officials to
forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, or violence, including death or other forms of ...
as a "socially dangerous element". Some years later Sgovio sought to have his case reviewed; the prosecutor who dealt with the application concluded that, "Sgovio does not deny that he did make an application at the American Embassy. Therefore I believe that there is no reason to review Sgovio's case. Sgovio was transported in a prison train to
Vladivostok Vladivostok ( ; , ) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai and the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia. It is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, covering an area o ...
. Sgovio wrote, "Our train left Moscow on the evening of 24 June. It was the beginning of an eastward journey which was to last a month. I can never forget the moment. Seventy men ... began to cry." quoting Sgovio, ''Dear America!'', 1979, pp. 129-35 From
Vladivostok Vladivostok ( ; , ) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai and the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia. It is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, covering an area o ...
he was shipped aboard the to the
Kolyma Kolyma (, ) or Kolyma Krai () is a historical region in the Russian Far East that includes the basin of Kolyma River and the northern shores of the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as the Kolyma Mountains (the watershed of the two). It is bounded to ...
camps. Within the camps the professional criminals were often kept alongside and dominated the other prisoners including the
political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although ...
s. Tattoos of various types were one of the hallmarks of the professional criminal and as a professional artist, Sgovio became part of the tattoo trade. For a while Sgovio was also personal orderly to a senior guard in the camp. At another time he was part of a logging brigade. During the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, Sgovio learned of the conflict in the Pacific when machine parts wrapped in old newspapers arrived in the Gulag having been diverted from the US
Lend-Lease Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (),3,000 Hurricanes and >4,000 other aircraft) * 28 naval vessels: ** 1 Battleship. (HMS Royal Sovereign (05), HMS Royal Sovereign) * ...
program with the USSR. He witnessed and later wrote about the starvation and deaths of countless Gulag prisoners and victims of the Soviet authorities. quoting Sgovio, ''Dear America!'', 1979, pp. 160-162 Sgovio survived his ordeal. After a 16-year sentence in labor camps, he was released but initially had to remain in the USSR where he was stigmatised as a former prisoner. Eventually he was permitted to return to the United States in 1960. He related his experiences and the lethal nature of the camps in his memoir, ''Dear America! Why I Turned Against Communism'', published in 1972. His fate is also recounted in Tim Tzouliadis' book '' The Forsaken''.


See also

* '' The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia'' * '' The Ghost of the Executed Engineer'' *
John H. Noble John H. Noble (September 4, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was an American survivor of the Soviet Gulag system, who wrote several books which described his experiences in it after he was permitted to leave the Soviet Union and return to the United ...
(1923–2007) American survivor of the Gulags * Alexander Dolgun (1926-1986) survivor of the Soviet Gulag who returned to his native United States. * Robert Robinson (engineer) (1907-1994) Jamaican-born toolmaker who initially worked in the US auto industry in the United States but spent 44 years in the Soviet Union. *
Victor Herman Victor Herman (September 25, 1915 – March 25, 1985) was a Jewish-American who spent 18 years as a Soviet prisoner in the Gulags of Siberia. At 16 years of age, his family (and about 300 other Ford Motor Company families) went to work in th ...
(1915-1985) Jewish-American initially known as the 'Lindbergh of Russia', who then spent 18 years in the Gulags of Siberia.


Notes


Further reading

*
Introduction online


External links


Sgovio family Reference PageThomas Sgovio's Prisoner Transport Journeys Map
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sgovio, Thomas 1916 births 1997 deaths American people of Italian descent American expatriates in Russia American people imprisoned in the Soviet Union American emigrants to the Soviet Union 20th-century American artists Foreign Gulag detainees