Alexander Dolgun

Alexander Dolgun (September 29, 1926 - August 28, 1986) was a survivor of the Soviet Gulag who wrote about his experiences in 1975 after being allowed to leave the Soviet Union and return to his native United States.

Alexander Dolgun was born on September 29, 1926 in the Bronx, New York City, to Michael Dolgun, an immigrant from Poland, and his wife, Annie Dolgun. In 1933, Michael travelled to the Soviet Union as a short-term technician at Moscow Automotive Works. After a year in Moscow, Michael consented to another one-year tour on the condition that the Soviet Union pay for his family to come over. However, when Michael's second tour of duty was up, he was prevented from leaving by bureaucratic barriers erected by the Soviet authorities and his family was trapped. Alexander Dolgun and his older sister, Stella, grew up in Moscow during the Great Purge of the late 1930s and the Second World War. In 1943, the 16-year-old Alexander took a job at the United States Embassy in Moscow.

In December 1948, Dolgun - a US citizen - was working as a file clerk at the Embassy. During his lunch break, he was suddenly taken into custody by the Soviet State Security, the MGB. He was interned in the infamous Lubyanka and Lefortovo prisons in Moscow. He was falsely accused of espionage against the Soviet Union and endured a year of sleep and food deprivation, as well as brutal psychological and physical torture designed to prod him into "confessing" to his interrogator, Colonel Sidorov. After successfully enduring this trial, Dolgun was transferred to Sukhanovka, a former monastery converted into a prison. He survived several months of intense torture and was one of a very few who survived the prison with their sanity intact, using tactics such as measuring various distances in his cell as well as distances he covered walking; he estimated that in his time there, the distance he covered walking was enough to take him from Moscow across Europe and halfway across the Atlantic Ocean. His time in Sukhanovka brought him to the brink of death, and he was transferred to the hospital at Butyrki prison to recuperate. His whereabouts were known by Truman, Eisenhower and the US government, but they did nothing for fear of Soviet authorities further harming Dolgun due to fragile US-Soviet relations.

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