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The Repatriate: Love, Basketball, and the KGB, by Tom Mooradian.
Adventure.
Danger. Romance. From the very first pages, Tom Mooradian’s newly published The Repatriate attracts the reader’s attention. One is
a drawn into Mooradian’s unlikely thirteen years spent in Soviet Armenia, feeling his initial excitement at the move, to his bitter
disappointment, and struggle to escape.
The repatriation of Armenians from the Diaspora to
Tom Mooradian’s decision in November
1947 to join a group of 150 Armenian-American expatriates led him on an unexpected separation of close to thirteen years from family
and friends. Mooradian was a senior in high school when he made the fateful choice. Trapped behind the newly descending Iron
Curtain, Mooradian, at age 19, had to struggle to eke out an existence with others who shared his same fate.
Following World War II,
Soviet leaders called for members of the ethnic republics to return to their fatherland, to help rebuild the country. In the
Although he had initially been inspired to travel to the Soviet Armenia, Mooradian had little idea of how difficult it
would be to leave
Mooradian’s
decision to leave the
In stark and expressive words, Mooradian describes
life on the Russian ship Rossia that took him to
Mooradian is filled with self-doubt as he replays
the decision to travel to
Mooradian
was able to pack a lifetime of memories in the years that he lived in Soviet Armenia, and his eye-witness testimony is a vivid reminder
of what many other Armenians suffered.
The Repatriate is a must read for all.
The Repatriate is available through the