Yanks for Stalin (1999) is a 60-minute History Undercover series special documentary that aired on the History Channel. It chronicles the story of American white- and blue-collar workers who left the United States during the Great Depression to work in the Soviet Union to bolster Joseph Stalin's five-year plans.
Though the American white collar workers received special treatment there, the blue collar laborers often had to suffer the same deplorable conditions as Soviet workers. As one testified: "Men froze, hungered and suffered, but the construction work went on with a disregard for individuals and a mass heroism seldom paralleled in history."
The program examines both how the Soviets spun the facts and how American industry concealed the help it provided to the Soviet Union.