"I Outlived the Bastards" : A Memoir of Escaping Russia and Discovering America / Albert Parry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Parry, Albert, Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (410 p.)

Place of Publication:

Boston, MA Academic Studies Press, [2026]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

I Outlived the Bastards: A Memoir of Escaping Russia and Discovering America is a living history narrative of survival and reinvention. Born in Russia in 1901 as Abram Paretsky, Albert Parry came of age in a world on the brink of immense change. As a teenager, he went from dating Joseph Stalin’s future wife to escaping a firing squad under a hail of bullets during the Russian Civil War. Fleeing Russia in 1920, he arrived in America the following year with little more than his wits. Reinventing himself as Albert Parry, he built a successful career as a freelance writer in the 1920s and 1930s before earning a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1938. Opposing isolationism before Pearl Harbor, he went on to work with the American and British intelligence agencies during World War II. After the war, at Colgate University, he founded the first undergraduate Russian Studies program in the United States. Over the course of his life, he moved through a world of revolution, exile, and cultural upheaval—crossing paths with John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken, Richard Wright, and Vladimir Nabokov—and even being thrown off a Hollywood set by Greta Garbo. Part adventure, part intellectual journey, this memoir captures a life lived along the fault lines of the 20th century—from war and ideology to art, literature, and espionage. With the insight of a historian and the voice of a born storyteller, Parry reflects on identity, freedom, and the value of courageous political belief. He died just four months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, having the last word: “I outlived the bastards.” A fitting epitaph for a remarkable man.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 I Am Taken to Be Shot

Chapter 2 Rostov: Strident, Prosperous, Polyglot

Chapter 3 My Family and Me

Chapter 4 My Brother's End

Chapter 5 Prelude to Farewell

Chapter 6 Farewell

Chapter 7 Stowaway

Chapter 8 Do You Know my Uncle?

Chapter 9 Bullet in the Back

Chapter 10 Americanization

Chapter 11 Diamonds Going Begging

Chapter 12 Pete-Father-Hollywood

Chapter 13 So Pink the Sheet

Chapter 14 Men of Muscle

Chapter 15 Men of Spirit

Chapter 16 Sundry Other Talents

Chapter 17 My Mother and Some American Authors

Chapter 18 Not Another Conrad

Chapter 19 Introducing Nabokov to America

Chapter 20 Back to College at Thirty-Four

Chapter 21 Richard Wright and Others

Chapter 22 On Pearl Harbor's Eve

What Happened to Some of the People Mentioned in this Memoir

Afterword

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed June 25 2026)

ISBN:

9798887198781