In 1947, a celebrated American-Armenian basketball prodigy voluntarily repatriates to The Soviet Union only to find himself ensnared in a brutal regime for thirteen years.
His athletic talent becomes both his lifeline and his cage 
as he fights to reclaim his freedom and the American Dream he once knew.

“Fascinating…Mooradian brought them all back, raw and graphic memories of the Soviet Union we both knew, which now is no more…Mooradian’s story is of a world that’s gone, thank God. He has brought it back to life, for us to look back on, with horror.”

– Roy Essoyan, Retired Foreign Correspondent

On the Soviet Basketball Court

ABOUT TOM MOORADIAN

Born and raised in Detroit, Tom Mooradian was recognized as one of Michigan’s top high school basketball players in 1947. His journey to Soviet Armenia as part of a repatriation program would change the course of his life forever. He survived 13 years in the USSR, became a Soviet national basketball star, and later returned to the U.S., where he worked as a journalist. Tom’s Memoir, The Repatriate: Love, Basketball, and the KGB is the winner of seven book awards including first place in the Memoir category at the Hollywood Book Festival (2017); and second place in both the Reader’s Views Literary Awards (2017), and the San Francisco Book Festival (2017). In addition, it received high rankings in the Royal Dragonfly Book Awards (2017), Kindle Book Awards (2017), the Indie Book Awards, (2018), and the Eric Hoffer Book Awards (2020). 
 
The sequel, The Repatriate Returns: Home, Family, and the FBI, covers Tom’s return to the U.S., his experiences reentering American life after the Cold War and McCarthyism, and the unexpected consequences of his years behind the Iron Curtain. What begins as a homecoming becomes a new kind of trial: Tom is celebrated by some, questioned by others, and quietly surveilled by the FBI. As he builds a career in journalism and raises a family, he must also navigate the shadows of suspicion and the scars of exile. A powerful reflection on identity, patriotism, and the cost of survival, The Repatriate Returns: Home, Family, and the FBI is a deeply personal account of a man caught between two worlds – and his lifelong search for belonging.

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The Story of an American Repatriate

In the early months of 1947, eighteen-year-old Tom Mooradian had everything — Hollywood good looks, high academic ranking in his senior class at Southwestern High School, recognition by the three Detroit daily newspapers as being one of the finest basketball talents in the Public School League and in the state. Before the end of that year, however, he would find himself with hundreds of other Soviet citizens, standing in long unruly lines hoping to purchase a kilo of black, damp, sawdust filled bread. He was fighting the daily fight for survival in the Soviet Union. But bread was the least of his worries; he was not allowed to travel or utter one word against the state in public or private conversation. Mooradian had lost his freedom. It was not a dream, but a nightmare that he and 150 other American Armenians willingly, but unknowingly, walked into when they signed up for the Armenian Repatriation.

Shortly after their arrival in Erevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia, the NKVD, the Soviet Secret Police, arrested Mooradian as he boarded a plane for Moscow. Beaten at the airport, Mooradian was conveyed to NKVD headquarters, his crime: he had authored and agreed to present a petition, he and three other repatriates had signed, to the US Ambassador, pleading for help to return to the United States.

Mooradian’s basketball prowess captured the hearts of the Soviet people and probably saved his life. Miraculously surviving 13 years behind the Iron Curtain, he had the opportunity to see what no foreign correspondent, no western journalist, no diplomat was permitted to see: the Soviet Union as the Soviets lived.

Filled with political drama, romance, and intrigue, Tom’s autobiography, The Repatriate reads like a novel, and will have you guessing how Tom managed to return to America alive.

The Second Edition of The Repatriate is available on Kindle and in Paperback!