Alexander Akalovsky: From Yugoslavia to American Diplomacy
A displaced person admitted in 1949 who became one of the Department's Russian interpreters during the Cold War.
- Fled
- Yugoslavia
- Status
- Displaced person
- Arrived in the U.S.
- 1949
- Service
- Department of State interpreter, language services, from 1956
- Region
- Europe and the Soviet Union
Alexander Akalovsky was born in 1923 on a small island in what is now Croatia, to Russian parents who had left Russia after the revolution. His father had fought with the White Army. After World War II the family came to the United States in 1949 under the Displaced Persons Act, landing first at a reception home for Russian refugees in San Francisco.
He joined the Department of State in April 1956 as an interpreter, at the height of the Cold War, when Russian-language interpreting at the highest levels of government was a sensitive job. He later described his career in an oral history for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.