EMIGRANTS: The Long Voyage Home

Like most of the world’s wandering peoples, Armenians cherish the dream of home. In Manhattan, last week, 150 of the 150,000 Armenians in the U.S. found the tug of homesickness too strong to resist. They stepped aboard the trim, white Soviet steamship Rossia, sailed for the old country—now a part of the U.S.S.R.

Most of the adults among them had lived in the U.S. for 30 or 35 years. Most were not Communists and many had obviously prospered. Their children looked, talked and dressed like Americans. But they were certain that Mother Russia offered them more than America. Their passage was free. They had been promised good jobs, loans with which to build homes and businesses. Russia, starved for goods, was shipping up to $60,000 worth of their machinery and possessions for nothing—many were taking automobiles, refrigerators, tools.

Those with money and education seemed confident that they would become the elite of Armenia. The poor among them seemed sure that Russia offered them opportunity the U.S. had denied them. But there were things about their journey which many of them did not know. Most seemed ignorant of the fact that they were one small part of a mass movement —that Russia, which needs men for her farms & factories in Armenia, was bringing Armenians back by the thousands from poorer European countries and the Middle East. All 150 had renounced their U.S. citizenship and were sailing as Russian immigrants, but some had the mistaken idea that they could come back to the U.S. after a while if they didn’t like the U.S.S.R.

Before they sailed, spokesmen for the group issued a statement: “We depart from the U.S. of our own free will, with sentiments of deepest gratitude and admiration. . . . The democratic institutions of America afforded us an opportunity to build life anew.”

But the Moscow Radio said it differently; U.S. Armenians, it explained, were the victims of discrimination and unemployment and were disillusioned with life in America.