![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Their friendship has not compromised Usdin’s objectivity, however while clearly impressed with Barr’s virtuosity-the engineer invented a closet refrigerator, developed numerous electronic devices, and turned his cinderblock apartment into a nightclub-the author fully confirms that Barr was also a spy, something which the engineer never acknowledged in his lifetime, even to his young friend. Despite the forty-five year difference in their ages, the two became fast friends, permitting us to discover “whatever happened to Joel Barr,” a question that had puzzled the FBI for decades. Usdin, a journalist and technology expert, met Barr (then using his Soviet name of Joseph Berg) by chance in the early 1990s while working on assignment in Russia. ![]() The story of how Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant, American engineers who assisted Stalin’s Russia as part of the Rosenberg ring in World War II, escaped, and later developed the Soviet computer industry, is one of those Cold War mysteries that have long intrigued scholars and laymen alike. Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley. ![]()
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