Product Description
by Tom Crawford (Author)
Goli Otok is a naked island off the coast of Croatia that served as a penal colony for political prisoners of Yugoslavia after World War II. Thousands were Partisan fighters against the German occupation caught on the Soviet side of the ideological split between Moscow and Belgrade in 1948. Many leaders of the pro-Soviet faction were slain trying to flee eastward. Other leaders and thousands of followers were imprisoned on Goli Otok. Many died there. Years later, Sergei Korneichuk, a Red Army intelligence agent is assigned to Belgrade under cover as a correspondent of Radio Moscow. His activities reveal how the seeds were sown for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
Author Biography
Tom Crawford, a native of Whitinsville, Mass., began his newspaper career with the Worcester, Mass. Telegram after graduation from Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa. He joined United Press International in Boston after U.S. Army service, including graduation from the Army Language School in Monterey, Calif. and assignments with the Counter Intelligence Corps in Germany. He separated from the service in Germany and studied Slavic languages and history at the University of Munich before returning to the United States. He served with UPI in Springfield, Mass., and Boston before being assigned to London and later as chief of the agency's Belgrade bureau in Yugoslavia. He subsequently joined The Springfield Union and Republican, advancing eventually to news editor. In 1989, he returned to the Balkans as Serbia marked the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo between the Turks and the Serbs. This outbreak of nationalist fervor eventually led to the latest Balkan wars of the 1990s and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Goli Otok focuses on the role that a Ukrainian correspondent for Radio Moscow played in this history and his familial links to two tragic female figures, a teen-age Soviet track star and a woman pharmacist in Belgrade.
