Race,politics and US students in 1930s Soviet Russia

Abstract

In response to charges of racial discrimination, the Communist International admitted twelve, instead of one or two, Black Americans to Moscow’s International Lenin School in 1931. When the experiences of these Black Americans failed to correspond to the image of Soviet racial equality, with regard to the conduct of white Americans and school officials, they criticised these disparities not only as ‘racist’, but, more importantly, as ‘anti-Soviet’. Like the Black American students who attended the Eastern University in Moscow, the Black Americans at the Lenin School did not perceive Soviet anti-racism simply as a paternalistic, abstract discourse. Indeed, Black Americans in both institutions recognised that they had more to gain by actively supporting Soviet anti-racism than by joining their white American oppressors in openly attacking it.