TOBENKIN, ELIAS

TOBENKIN, ELIAS (1882–1963), U.S. journalist and author. Born in Russia and taken to the U.S. as a boy, he served as Russian expert for the U.S. Committee on Public Information. He was correspondent for the Herald Tribune in Eastern Europe and Germany, and in 1926 spent five months in the U.S.S.R. and wrote an uncensored account of the Communist regime. His first novel Witte Arrives (1916) described the Americanization of an immigrant Jewish family. God of Might (1925) dealt with the problems of intermarriage. Among his other books were Stalin's Ladder (1933) and The Peoples Want Peace (1938).