The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller: Soviet Espionage and the Cruelties of Stalin's Gulags

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Peter Buck Feller

The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller

Name: The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller
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ISBN: 9798881807573

Soviet Espionage and the Cruelties of Stalin's Gulags

Peter Buck Feller

$50

Hardback

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English

Bloomsbury
19 February 2026

History; European history

Peter Buck Feller's father disappeared in Moscow in 1938, when Feller was just six months old. As a young boy he asked his mother about him, but his questions went invariably unanswered. Decades later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Feller embarked on a detailed search to reclaim his father.

His journey took him and his adult daughters to Moscow, Siberia, and Germany. He gained access to a now-declassified espionage FBI file, which contained an anonymous letter from a man who had been imprisoned in one of Stalin's gulags: ""I plan to write a book about all what occurred to me during these dreadful ten years. The title of this book, I would like it to be ‘The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller.’""

Feller was stunned. William Schwarzfeller was his lost father, for whom he searched, in one way or another, all of his life. He learned that his father had been an agent for Red Army Intelligence. He was arrested in 1938 and starved to death in a gulag in 1943. This new information led him to a host of discoveries, his mother's vast FBI file, and a story about his father on the front page of the Communist newspaper The Daily Worker.

By: Peter Buck Feller
Imprint: Bloomsbury
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 232mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 400g
ISBN: 9798881807573
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 19 February 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Chapter 1 The Anonymous Letter Chapter 2 Escape from Moscow Chapter 3 FBI Alert Chapter 4 Finding My German Family Chapter 5 Recalled and Arrested Chapter 6 The Brody Connection Chapter 7 The Kremenets Massacre Chapter 8 The Episcopalian Mafia Chapter 9 Vorkuta Chapter 10 Mission Manchuria Chapter 11 The Last Gasp Postscript The Mystery of F.P.D.

Peter Buck Feller is an independent historian with a particular interest in Soviet-German conflicts and espionage during the Second World War. He has written articles for Foreign Policy, and for The Pennsylvania Gazette.

Reviews for The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller: Soviet Espionage and the Cruelties of Stalin's Gulags

The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller is a remarkable book. Feller narrates his quest to reconstruct the story of his father, who disappeared in Moscow in 1938 when Feller was only six months old. In the process, he tells important stories about the interwar Left in the United States, international espionage, Stalinist terror, and the Gulag. The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller is a gripping family saga that is as moving as it is profound in its depiction of some of the most important episodes of twentieth-century history. * Alan Barenberg, author of The Gulag: A Very Short Introduction *