Stalin's Witnesses

Vilna, the Russian Empire, 1905. En route to deliver a secret pamphlet entrusted to him by his older brothers, a young boy falls into the clutches of the Czars secret police. Another decade will pass before the Crown gives way, not to liberally minded revolutionaries like Vladimir Romm, but to the pitiless disciples of an embittered lawyer named Lenin. For the next three-quarters of a century, Marxism in its cruelest form will rule Russia. Returning to Vilna during the winter of 1918 for the first time since his youth, Romm finds it occupied by Polish troops. As World War I yields to an uneasy peace, Romm joins Soviet intelligence. In 1934 Romm becomes the USSR's inaugural correspondent to Washington and strives to bring key Americans to the Soviet side. But as his career reaches its zenith, Romm is suddenly recalled, arrested, and forced to testify with four other "witnesses" at the notorious 1937 Moscow show trial.