This book is a chronicle of vanishing worlds, yet worlds comprising a story worth telling. It conveys the impact of the most burning European and American issues of the twentieth century. This book encompasses the world of pre-war Polish Jewry, particularly the socialist and Yiddishist world of the Bund, the Jewish socialist party born in Tsarist Russia, and then striking firm roots in independent post- World-War Poland. It further depicts the war years in Poland, the Soviet Union, and Japan; the world of a young immigrant in California, in New York, and in the American army, and finally the world of a Sovietologist, a profession the author practiced while working for the United States government in several capacities and in the retirement years.