I Chose Freedom

I Chose Freedom: The Personal Political Life of a Soviet Official is a book by the Soviet Ukrainian defector Viktor Kravchenko. It was a bestseller in the United States and Europe. The book was written in 1946 and published in 1947. A review was published in The New York Times that year.^[1] I Chose Freedom depicts many episodes in Soviet history, including the Soviet famine of 1932–1933, the Gulag system, and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (1939).

I Chose Freedom

Author	Viktor Kravchenko
Publisher	Scribners
Publication date	1947

The book received support from the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret branch of the UK Foreign Office which specialised in disinformation, anti-communism, and pro-colonial propaganda.^[2][3] Through the IRD, the British government bought the foreign rights to I Chose Freedom and then deployed their agents to promote both the author and its works both within Britain and across the globe.^[4]

It depicted collectivization in the USSR and caused a serious strike to the communist regime and Stalin. It depicted the crimes of the Stalinist regime, in particular the Famine of 1932-1933, the Gulag, the cooperation of the governments of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler and the Holodomor. It was reprinted many times, including decades after its first publication, at least in 2007, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2022.^[5][6]

It was published:

• 73 times in English
• 42 times in French
• 28 times in German
• 27 times in Spanish
• some times in Italian ^[7]
• Several times in Ukrainian ^[8][9]

Western researchers often refer to it.^{[10][11][12][13][14][15]}

It has at least 50 references in other books.^[16]

The book is still popular.^[17][18]

References

1. "I CHOSE FREEDOM REVIEWED BY THE NYT - New York City April 1946". sites.google.com.
2. Mitter, Rana; Major, Patrick (2005). Across the Block: Cold War Cultural and Social History. Taylor & Francis e-library: Frank Cass and Company Limited. p. 125.
3. Jenks, John (2006). British Propaganda and News Media in the Cold War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 132.
4. Jenks, John (2006). British Propaganda and News Media in the Cold War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 71.
5. "Editions of I Chose Freedom by Victor Kravchenko". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2019-08-25.
6. "Escolhi a Liberdade". Goodreads. Retrieved 2022-10-23.
7. Kravchenko, Victor (1946). Yo escogí la libertad; In the area of policy and politics, it is a fundamental task of the Emigration of the U.R.S.S. en Washington (in Spanish). Madrid: Nos. OCLC 21958815.
8. "Formats and Editions of <>. [WorldCat.org]". www.worldcat.org. Retrieved 2019-08-01.
9. Kravchenko, Victor (1948). I͡A vybrav voli͡u : osobyste ĭ politychne z͡hyttii͡a sovi͡etsʹkoho uri͡adovi͡a. Toronto: Druk. "Ukraïnsʹkoho robitnyka ". OCLC 977648184.
10. Parry-Giles, Shawn J. (2002). The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945-1955. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780275974633.
11. Снайдер, Тимоти (2015). Кровавые земли: Европа между Гитлером и Сталиным (in Russian). Дуліби. ISBN 9789668910975.
12. Overy, Richard (2005-04-28). The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 9780141912240.
13. Fitzpatrick, Sheila (1999-03-04). Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199839247.
14. Miner, Steven Merritt (2003-10-16). Stalin's Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics, 1941-1945. Univ of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807862124.
15. Lee, Stephen J. (2005-06-20). Stalin and the Soviet Union. Routledge. ISBN 9781134665747.
16. ""I Chose Freedom" Kravchenko - Пошук Google". www.google.com.ua. Retrieved 2019-05-14.
17. "I Chose Freedom". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2019-05-14.
18. "Escolhi a Liberdade". Goodreads. Retrieved 2022-10-23.