Rounault, Jean: Mon ami Vassia. Souvenirs du Donetz. Bruit du Temps, Paris, 1949.

In January 1945 the Russian occupation authorities in Romania, by agreement with the Government, deportet some 60.000 citiziens of German origin to work in the U.S.S.R. In the haste and muddle with which this operation was carried out, many mistakes occured. Among those deported in error was a French citizien, Jean Renault, who, as a consequencec spent a year working in Makeyevka, in the Donetz coal basin, before he could achieve his relase. Though he lived in the deportees' camp, he worked together with and under the same conditions as the Russian workers themselves. Speaking their language, he was accepted as one of them and taken into their confidence. Thus he was able to get an insight into their real life, their thoughts and mentality, so vastly different from the picture drawn by official propaganda or by foreign outsiders. He relates his observations and experiences with sympathetic understanding, touches of humor, and great warmth of feeling. With masterly simplicity, he sketches scenes in the workshop, in the canteen, the famous town bazaar, Easter Mass in a workers' hut; he tells of the corrupt and fat nachlaniki (bosses), the morals and manners of the workers, their generosity and comradeship, the way in which they defend themselves against oppression an how they react to Government propaganda, and of the pathetic eagerness and longing with which these workers listened to his tales of 'free life' in distant lands. The Russia we have here is not that of Five-Year-Plan propaganda and official statements, but the Russia of his work-mates Kolia, Ivan, Vassia - a world about which we know extremly little. Rounault's book fills a gap in our knowledge.