Coming Out of the Ice stars John Savage as the real-life Victor Herman, an American athlete born to Russian immigrants.

In 1931, when Herman was sixteen, he and his family moved to the Soviet Union when his father was transferred there for his job with Ford Motor Company.

Four years later, Victor won the world parachute jump competition, but refused to accept an award bestowed by Josef Stalin or to renounce his American citizenship.

Presumably as a result, Herman was sentenced to hard labor and then exile in Siberia; he would not be cleared of "counterrevolutionary" charges until 1955.

He eventually returned to the United States nearly 45 years after he was first imprisoned.

Filmed in Finland, Coming Out the Ice was first broadcast on May 23, 1982.

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The true story of Victor Herman, who immigrated to the Soviet Union

c.1930 as a child with his parents. He became a star athlete, but was

sent to Siberian work camps when he refused to renounce his American

past and identify himself as Russian; he eventually spent 18 years in

gulags before being released.

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet

forced labor camp systems during the Stalin era, from the 1930s until

the 1950s.

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