Nuclear Baseball: Colonel Boris T. Pash

• In Event: Internalizing the Impact of Exile: Migration Experience, Liberation, and Identity Change

Abstract

This paper will outline the biography of Colonel Boris Theodore Pash (Pashkovskii) – a maverick Russian-American powerhouse who took part in the most pivotal events of the 20th century, and yet remains an obscure figure. An American-born ethnic Russian, Boris returned to Russia shortly before the First World War, in which he participated with his father. The First World War merged into the quagmire of the Russian Civil War and then he emigrated. For almost 20 years, Boris led a life of a simple high-school teacher in Hollywood, only in 1940 becoming an asset for the American military intelligence. Suddenly, something changed: Pash skyrocketed through the ranks, participated in the grim internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, and later became one of the key figures in the Manhattan Project. He undertook investigation against Oppenheimer, stole the uranium ore from the Nazis in Europe, along with the Nobel Prize winners, thus making Hiroshima possible. After the war, he was one of the key architects of the Cold War security system in Europe and was the core planner of anti-Communist coups in Eastern Europe. Dabbling into Orthodox Church politics on the side, Pash fanatically served the USA and tilted the balance of nuclear power in its favour, without any consideration for the methods and consequences. Using his biography, we will try to ascertain whether the “foreigness” of émigrés led to a complicated “liberation” in practices and identities, or whether this pertained to Pash’s case only.

Author

• Oleg Beyda, U of Melbourne (Australia)