BOOK NOTES: Khrushchev's "Return to the Homeland Campaign" (04/29/01)

BOOK NOTES

Khrushchev's "Return to the Homeland Campaign"

"Canada and the Khrushchev Government's 'Return to the Homeland' Campaign" by Serge Cipko and Peter M. Roberts. Ottawa: Center for Research on Canadian-Russian Relations, 2000. 55 pp., $12 (paper).

In the foreword to Serge Cipko and Peter Robert's new book, "Canada and the Khrushchev Government's 'Return to the Homeland' Campaign," J.L. Black, director of the Center for Research on Canadian-Russian Relations, writes:

"On November 21, 1999, three major Canadian newspapers carried a story on Nikita Khrushchev's campaign in the 1950s to attract émigrés from Russia and the USSR back to their 'homeland.' His committee in charge broadcast an alluring message: 'We have defeated the fascists, Stalin is dead, we are strong and prosperous. Come home and help us create the socialist Utopia.' Up to 15,000 individuals, mostly ethnic Russians and Ukrainians living in Canada heeded the siren song and returned."

The CRCR has been researching this phenomenon since 1998. Messrs. Cipko and Roberts have interviewed returnees who eventually were able to come back to Canada, often after spending 30 some years in the USSR. Currently, the CRCR is advertising in Ukraine, hoping to hear from returnees, or their families, who have lived there since the 1950s.

Mr. Roberts is a former Canadian ambassador to the USSR and a junior embassy official in Moscow during the 1950s when Khrushchev initiated the campaign in question. Mr. Cipko was a history professor at Lakehead University and is now with the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.

This book is available from the Center for Research on Canadian-Russian Relations, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6; telephone, (613) 520-4439.

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