HINDUS, MAURICE GERSCHON

HINDUS, MAURICE GERSCHON (1891–1969), U.S. author. Hindus, who was born in Bolshoye Bikovo, Belorussia, was taken to the United States in 1905. A prolific contributor to the press from 1917 onward, he wrote many books about the Soviet Union, which he visited in 1923 on an assignment for Century Magazine and on a number of other occasions as a freelance writer. These accounts of his travels in the U.S.S.R. include Humanity Uprooted (1929), which discussed social conditions and policies in post-revolutionary Russia; Red Bread (1931); The Great Offensive (1933); Mother Russia (1943) and The Cossacks (1945), two World War II books; and House Without a Roof (1961). Hindus also wrote three novels, Moscow Skies (1936), Sons and Fathers (1940), and Magda (1951). In time his initial sympathy for the Soviet regime gave way to disenchantment with the totalitarian nature of Russian communism. In his autobiography, Green Worlds (1938), Hindus described his boyhood in a Russian village and his search for employment on a farm after his arrival in the U.S. This work includes an interesting assessment of the contrasts between country life in the United States and in Russia.