Yanks for Stalin (1999) is a 60-minute History Undercover series special documentary that aired on the History Channel. It chronicles the story of American white- and blue-collar workers who left the United States during the Great Depression to work in the Soviet Union to bolster Joseph Stalin's five-year plans.
Though the American white collar workers received special treatment there, the blue collar laborers often had to suffer the same deplorable conditions as Soviet workers. As one testified: "Men froze, hungered and suffered, but the construction work went on with a disregard for individuals and a mass heroism seldom paralleled in history."
The program examines both how the Soviets spun the facts and how American industry concealed the help it provided to the Soviet Union.
Famous quotes containing the words yanks and/or stalin:
“The Yanks have colonized our subconscious.”
—Wim Wenders (b. 1945)
“To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed ... there is nothing sweeter in the world.”
—Josef Stalin (1879–1953)