The Leninist argument, that the class struggle of the European proletariat was intertwined with the liberation of the `toiling masses of the East', led to an official ideology of Soviet internationalism in which Africans occupied a special place. Depictions of the evils of racism in the US became a staple of Soviet popular culture and a number of black radicals, among them Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson and Claude McKay, flocked to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-30s, inspired by the belief that a society free of racism had been created. While there was some truth to this view, people of African descent in the Soviet Union nevertheless experienced a condescending paternalism, reflected also in their cinematic portrayal and in popular literature and folklore. With the onset of the cold war, young Africans were encouraged to study in Russia, where they received a mixed reaction and, on account of occasional conflict with the authorities and Soviet cultural norms, became symbols of dissent against official Soviet culture. Later, in the perestroika period, Africa became a scapegoat for popular discontent amidst a worsening climate of racism.
Quoted in William Taubman , Khrushchev: the man and his era ( New York, W. W. Norton, 2003), p. 378.
2.
Krokodil (No. 2, 20 January 1958 ), p. 8.
3.
Krokodil (No. 11, 20 April 1961), p. 5.
4.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ` Obraschenie Predsedatelia Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov V. I. Lenina i Narodnogo Komissara po Deelam Natsional'nostei I. V. Stalina ko Vsem Trudiashchimsia Musul'manam Rossii i Vostoka' [`Appeal by V. I. Lenin, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, and by I. V. Stalin, the People's Commissar of Nationalities, to all Muslim proletarians of Russia and the East'], in Dokumenty Vneshnei Politiki SSSR, vol. I (Moscow, Politizdat, 1959), p. 34.
5.
Boris Kornilov, Moia Africa (Leningrad, Lenizdat , 1935), quoted in Edward Wilson, Russia and Black Africa (New York, Holmes & Meier, 1974), p. 95. In fact, the Soviets claimed to have won over an entire African regiment from the French forces employed to aid the Whites during the Civil War. See Allison Blakely, Russia and the Negro: blacks in Russian history and thought ( Washington, DC, Howard University Press, 1986), p. 82.
6.
Pervyi S'ezdNarodov Vostoka, Baku 1-8 Sentiabria 1920: Stenograficheskie Otchety [The First Congress of the Peoples of the East, Baku 1-8 September 1920] (Petrograd, Izdatel'stvo Kommunisticheskogo Internatsionala, 1920), pp. 35-6.
7.
For more on the early Soviet writings on Africa, see Wilson, op. cit, pp. 99-120.
8.
Mikhail Pavlovich, Bor'ba za Aziiu i Afriku [The Struggle for Asia and Africa] ( Moscow, 1923), p. 209.
9.
Mikhail Pavlovich, Voprosy Kolonial'noi i Natsional'noi Politiki i III Internatsional [The Issues of Colonial and National Policy and the Third International] ( Moscow, Isdatel'stvo Kommunisticheskogo Internatsionala , 1920), pp. 46-7.
10.
See Woodford McClellan, `Black hajj to ``Red Mecca'': Africans and Afro-Americans at KUTV, 1925-1938', in Maxim Matusevich (ed.), Africa in Russia, Russia in Africa: three centuries of encounters (Trenton, NJ, Africa World Press, 2006), pp. 61-83.
11.
Claude McKay , Negroes in America (London , Kennikat Press, 1979), p. 5.
12.
Langston Hughes , I Wonder as I Wander (New York, Hill & Wang, 1993), p. 73.
13.
For the next fifteen years, Homer Smith wrote a popular `Column from Moscow' for the Chicago Defender, often under the pen name of Chatwood Hall.
14.
Homer Smith, Black Man in RedRussia: a memoir (Chicago, Johnson Publishing , 1964), p. vii.
15.
`Tvoi Chudnyi Golos' [`Your wonderful voice'], Letters to Paul Robeson on the Occasion of his 75th Birthday, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Springarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC, quoted in Blakely , op. cit, pp. 154-5.
16.
For an exhaustive analysis of Paul Robeson's ties to the Soviet Union, see Jeffrey C. Stewart (ed.), Paul Robeson: artist and citizen (New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1998).
17.
`To you beloved comrade', in Philip S. Foner (ed.), Paul Robeson Speaks: writings, speeches, interviews, 1918-1974 (New York, Brunner & Mazel, 1978), pp. 347-9.
18.
Black observers of and visitors to the Soviet Union were particularly intrigued (as Paul Robeson was) by the emancipation of the non-white ethnicities in Central Asia. The Uzbeks, the Tadjiks and others evoked powerful feelings of racial solidarity among visiting African Americans. Their lifestyles (cotton farming) and recent history (second- and third-class status in the pre-revolutionary colonial society) mirrored to an extent the black experience in the American South. It was for this reason that the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan became a destination of choice for African Americans journeying in the USSR, attracting not only idle travellers but also those willing to contribute to the agricultural development of Soviet Central Asia. In the late 1920s, a group of black Americans, headed by Tuskegee graduate Oliver Golden, arrived in Tashkent to work on an experimental cotton farm. See Allison Blakely, `African imprints on Russia', in Matusevich (ed.), Africa in Russia, Russia in Africa, op. cit., p. 47. Langston Hughes visited Uzbekistan on his own trip to Central Asia in 1932. Matt Crawford, one of the members of Hughes' group, wrote home to his wife that Central Asia was crucial to `believing in Russia': `There is an exact parallel between the condition that these people were under during the Czarist regime and the position of Negroes in the States now.' Quoted in Arnold Rampersad , The Life of Langston Hughes: volume I, 1902-1941 (Oxford, Oxford University Press , 2002), p. 256. John Sutton, another famous graduate of the Tuskegee Institute and favourite student of Dr George W. Carver, lived and worked in Uzbekistan from 1931-38. Three decades later, he would thus encourage his younger African American friend to visit the Soviet Union: `But, Elton, if you have the opportunity to visit the USSR by all means go! And if you can manage to get to Uzbekistan, go there too. You will find the Uzbeks so like our own people. After all, they, too, are among the colored peoples of the world.' Elton C. Fax, Through Black Eyes: journeys of a black artist to East Africa and Russia ( New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1974), p. 134.
19.
Paul Robeson, The Negro People and the Soviet Union (New York, New Century Publishers, 1950), p. 8.
20.
Smith, op. cit, pp. 56-7.
21.
Harry Haywood , Black Bolshevik: autobiography of an Afro-American communist (Chicago, IL, Liberator Press, 1978), pp. 170-1.
22.
A.L. Foster, leader of the Chicago Urban League, toured the USSR in 1936 and found the country and its people to be the eponym of racial equality: `It is the Communists alone, who offer colored people just what they say they are fighting for - political, social, cultural and economic equality.' Quoted in Mark Solomon, The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-36 ( Jackson, MS, University Press of Mississippi, 1998), p. 173.
23.
Ilya Ilf and Eugene Petrov, Little Golden America ( New York, Arno Press, 1974), p. 362.
24.
Ibid., p. 361.
25.
Ibid, pp. 362-3.
26.
Circus, dir. Georgii Alexandrov (Mosfilm, 1936 ).
27.
Maksimka, dir. Vladimir Braun (Studio Kiev, 1951 ).
28.
Smith, op. cit., p. 56. Emphasis added.
29.
Andrew Richard Amar, An African in Moscow ( London, Ampersand, 1963), p. 11.
30.
The Tale of How Tsar Peter Married Off his Negro, dir. Alexander Mitta (Mosfilm, 1976).
31.
A.B. Davidson , `History of Soviet African studies', paper delivered at the African Studies Association annual meeting in Nashville, TN (November 2000).
32.
See George Padmore , Pan-Africanism or Communism? ( New York, Roy Publishers, 1956).
33.
Hughes, op. cit, p. 76.
34.
Ibid., p. 80.
35.
Padmore, op. cit.
36.
David Albright (ed.), Africa and International Communism (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1980). See also George W. Breslauer (ed.), Soviet Policy in Africa (Berkeley, CA, Berkeley-Stanford Program in Soviet Studies, 1992).
37.
See, for example, John Akaan, `Nigerian students and the communist countries: Nigeria turns to the eastern world', unpublished paper, NIIA Collection, pp. 4-5.
38.
See N.L. Krylova , Russkie Zneshiny v Afrike: problemy adaptatsii [Russian Women in Africa: the problems of adaptation] ( Moscow, ROSSPEN, 1996).
39.
See, for example, Woodford McClellan, `Africans and black Americans in the Comintern schools, 1925-1934', The International Journal of African Historical Studies (Vol. 26, no. 2, 1993) and McClellan, `Black hajj to ``Red Mecca''', op. cit.
40.
Smith, op. cit, p. 105.
41.
See, for example, Olabisi Ajala, An African Abroad ( London, Jarolds, 1963); Amar, op. cit; Jan Carew, Moscow is Not My Mecca (London, Secker & Warburg, 1964); Andrea Lee, Russian Journal (New York, Random House, 2006); Nicholas Nyangira, `Africans don't go to Russia to be brainwashed ', New York Times Magazine (16 May 1965), p. 64.; S. Omor Okullo, `A Negro's life in Russia - beatings, insults, segregation', US News and World Report (Vol. XLIX, no. 5, 1963), pp. 59-60.
42.
For an exhaustive analysis of this episode, see Julie Hessler, `Death of an African student in Moscow: race, politics and the Cold War', Cahiers du Monde russe (Vol. 47, nos. 1-2, 2006), pp. 33-64.
43.
`Students demand bill of rights', West African Pilot (30 December 1963).
44.
Sunny Odulana , `Our students in Moscow', West African Pilot (2 January 1964).
45.
`Kiev strike settled', Africa Diary (Vol. 15, no. 49, 3-9 December 1975), pp. 7703-4.
46.
`The plight of our students in the USSR', West African Pilot (3 February 1964).
47.
Ibid.
48.
George Feifer , `The red and the black: racism in Moscow', Reporter (2 January 1964), p. 27.
49.
Amar, op. cit, p. 19.
50.
Lee, op. cit, p. 152.
51.
`Savannah and Taiga', in Yevgenii Yevtushenko, Vzmah Ruki [An Outstretched Hand] (Moscow, Molodaya Gvardia , 1962), pp. 58-9. My translation.
52.
Martin Luther King, Jr, with his Christian gospel and Gandhi-inspired tactics of civil disobedience, had to be inconvenient for the Soviets. They far preferred such firebrand radicals as Dr Angela Davis, whose famous 1971-72 trial occasioned a massive propaganda campaign of support by the Soviet Union. See, for example, numerous commentaries and cartoons about the trial in contemporary issues of Krokodil. A typical one depicts a plucky Davis holding her head high in front of a racist judge. The sleeve of the judge's robe is in fact an executioner's axe ready to drop on the courageous black communist. Krokodil (No. 5, February 1972), p. 10. But even Angela Davis inspired more than a sense of solidarity in the hearts of the Soviet intelligentsia. In 1978, a leading Soviet nuclear physicist Sergei Polikanov was expelled from the Communist Party after making a statement to western reporters protesting restrictions on travel abroad. `It was easier to fight for the freedom of Angela Davis than for our own freedom', announced Polikanov. `Soviet physicist who complained of travel curb is ousted by Party', New York Times (28 March 1978).
53.
Henry Kamm, `Portrait of a dissenter', preface to Andrei Amal'rik, Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? (New York, Harper & Row, 1970), p. XIII.
54.
Amar, op. cit, p. 63.
55.
Ibid, p. 63.
56.
All quotes in this paragraph come from S. Frederick Starr, Red and Hot: the fate of jazz in the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 ( New York, Limelight Editions, 1994 ), p. 91.
57.
Assa, dir. Sergey Soloviev ( Mosfilm, 1988).
58.
See Louis Grachos , Afrika (Los Angeles, CA, University of Southern California Fisher Gallery, 1991).
59.
The lyrics of the song come from a popular children's poem. See Kornei Chukovskii, Doktor Aibolit [Doctor Dolittle] (Moscow, Detskaiia Literatura, 1961).
60.
See Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika (New York, Harper & Row, 1988).
61.
L.Z. Zevin and E.L. Simonov, `Pomosh' i Ekonomicheskoe Sotrudnichestvo SSSR s Razvivayushimisia Stranami: Uroki, Problemy i Perspektivy' [Assistance and economic cooperation between the USSR and developing countries: lessons, problems, and perspectives], Narody Azii i Afriki (No. 2, 1990), pp. 5-17.
62.
Composed by V. Shainskii. Author's translation.
63.
See Charles Quist-Adade, In the Shadows of the Kremlin and the White House: Africa's media image from Communism to post-Communism (Lanham, MD, University Press of America , 2001) and his `From paternalism to ethno-centrism: images of Africa in Gorbachev's Russia', Race & Class (Vol. 46, no. 4, 2006), pp. 79-89.
64.
For a typical reaction, see W.O. Alli, `Glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union: implications for Africa', in Perestroika and Europe 1992: proceedings of a national seminar (Kano , Nigeria, The Nigerian Economic Society, 1991), pp. 163-4.
65.
`Xenoracism reaches Russia', IRR News (17 March 2004), <http://www.irr.org.uk/2004/march/ak000015.html>.
