After The War
In 1947 he managed to secure transportation to America through the good offices of the Tolstoy Foundation, an organization that helped numerous Russians reach the US. Here he became an academic and taught at such schools as Yale University and The George Washington University while raising a family. In 1955 and 1956 Petrov worked at Radio Liberty in Munich. Prof. Petrov's academic works included the books 'Money and Conquest', 'A Study in Diplomacy', 'What China Policy?', 'June 22, 1941' as well as various academic monographs.
In the 1950s Petrov participated in emigre politics and was a regular contributor to the newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo under a pseudonym. His connections included people as diverse as Kerensky and Max Eastman. He published the first volume of his memoirs, 'Soviet Gold', in 1949, and 'My Retreat from Russia' a couple of years later. 'Soviet Gold' was the first published memoir of a GULAG prisoner in the West, and received a favorable review from Winston Churchill. In 1947, he and Henry A. Wallace met, and Wallace publicly apologized for having misrepresented reality when he visited Magadan in 1944.
Petrov died March 17, 1999 at age 83 at his home in Kensington, Maryland, after a brief illness. He was survived by his wife, Jean McNab, nine children, and six grandchildren.
Read more about this topic: Vladimir Nikolayevich Petrov
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“We had won. Pimps got out of their polished cars and walked the streets of San Francisco only a little uneasy at the unusual exercise. Gamblers, ignoring their sensitive fingers, shook hands with shoeshine boys.... Beauticians spoke to the shipyard workers, who in turn spoke to the easy ladies.... I thought if war did not include killing, I’d like to see one every year. Something like a festival.”
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