black in the u.s.s.r. africans, african americans, and the soviet

8/3/2019 Black in the U.S.S.R. Africans, African Americans, And the Soviet

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Black in the U.S.S.R.: Africans, African Americans, and the Soviet

society

Maxim Matusevich

Transition, Issue 100, 2009, pp. 56-75 (Article)

Published by Indiana University Press

For additional information about this article

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56 Transition 100

Black in the U.S.S.R.

Africans, African Americans, and the Soviet society

Maxim Matusevich

MeMoriesinforMatleast some o our lie pursuits. I have long been tempted

to attribute my interest in the history o Arican-Russian encounters to oneparticularly embarrassing episode rom my adolescence. On a dreary Marchaternoon in the mid-1980s, a schoolmate o mine and I were waiting in along line (lines were ubiquitous in the Soviet Union) at the photographersstudio to have our passport pictures taken. In a ew weeks time, upon turn-ing sixteen, we would be presented with our rst Soviet passportstwo

inconspicuously looking red-jacketed documents with the letters CCCP[U.S.S.R.] emblazoned on the cover. In some signicant ways Soviet pass-ports diered rom similar identity papers issued by most other modern

states: they contained such inormation as your place o residence, maritalstatus, military rank or reserve soldiers and ocers, and, most notoriously,the so-called line no. 5identiying the bearers ethnicity. And thats whereour otherwise nearly identical passports would become two undamentallydierent documents. Line no. 5 in my riends passport would readRussian,

while my newly minted document would identiy me asJewishan ethnic(not religious) designation inused with cultural and political ambiguity. Tobe sure, all Soviet citizens, regardless o their creed and color, were supposedto enjoy equal rights and protection by the state. The reality, however, oten

departed rom the ideal. Jews in the Soviet Union routinely ound themselvesnegotiating a murky spaceramed by Soviet laws and political slogans, butsomewhat dissociated rom them in content. Ocially, there was no racismin the multiethnic U.S.S.R., racial bigotry being antithetical to Marxist

values. The Soviet Constitution, and even the Criminal Code o the land,targeted racial and ethnic discrimination or special approbation and crimi-nal prosecution. Yet many Soviet Jews lived under an invisible cloak oalienation, struggling to reconcile the antiracist rhetoric o the state with its

vitriolic denunciations o Israel and the subtle discrimination they aced in

their everyday livesthe very real (but never ocially mentioned or acknowl-edged) quotas on university admissions or Jews, the near impossibility orJews to pursue politically sensitive administrative or military careers, andan occasional racial slur hurled at you on an overcrowded city bus or in acommunal kitchen. Sitting in that photographers studio, not yet sixteen, I

was nevertheless well aware o the import that the wordJewish written on


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Matusevich Black in the U.S.S.R. 57

line no. 5 o the brand new red passport would have on my uture. And so,I suspect, was my secure-in-his-Russian-credentials riend . . .

The line had barely moved in a hal hour, but the people, accustomed towaiting in queues, showed no impatience. Ater all, waiting, and quite otenwaiting in vain, constituted such an essential part o Soviet experience. Thestudio door opened, letting in a whi o damp, chilly air, and a young Aricanman, clearly one o the thousands o oreign students present in the countryat the time, stepped in. Visibly cold and out o place, he scrutinized the lengtho the line, then started to walk toward thechair in the arthest corner o the room. Ashe was passing by our bench, my riend

elbowed me with a sly look on his pimplyace and snickered loudly, Smotri, kakayaobezyana! [Look, what a monkey!] The Ari-can roze on the spot, slowly turned around and approached us. More thantwenty years later, I still remember the urious and disgusted expression onhis dark ace. He xed us with his gaze or a ew very long seconds. I elt aknot in my stomach; my schoolmate was studying intently the lapels o hisshabby school uniorm, while the rest o the audience remained demonstra-tively oblivious to the scandal in the ong. But the scandal never erupted.

The black man smiled contemptuously, and then, speaking slowly in a heavilyaccented Russian, emphasizing every syllable, uttered something very strange:A Pushkin tozhe obezyana? [Was Pushkin also a monkey?] Having ailed toprocure an answer to his rhetorical query, he exited the studio amidst anuncomortable silence. I turned to my riend: Why did you insult him?! And

what are they doing here? countered the boy in a less-than-assured tone. I wasat a loss, not quite knowing how to respond to this eternal xenophobic ques-tion, and harboring a vague suspicion that the content o line no. 5 in mySoviet passport made me also an outsider in the country o my birth, provid-ing an invisible link between my own path and that o a lonely Arican studenttrudging through the early spring slush o Leningrad streets.

theyoung africansquestion had caught us o guard even though theSoviet educational system never made a secret o the Arican origins oRussias greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin. Neither did Pushkin himsel,passionately researching his own genealogy, commenting occasionally on

his Negro eatures, and longing or the skies o my Arica, in the cele-brated verse. Then, as now, anyone doubting Pushkins place on Russiasliterary Olympus, or questioning Pushkins Russianness would be com-mitting cultural blasphemy on a national scale. I anything, the poets

Arican roots supported the claim to the universality o Russian culture,

Ocially, there was no

racism in the multiethnic

U.S.S.R., racial bigotry beingantithetical to Marxist values.


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most amously ormulated by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his celebratedPushkinSpeech (1880) and, later, or the purposes o political expediency, upheld by

Soviet ideologues. Generations o Soviet schoolchildren learned rom anearly age the minute details o Pushkins biography, including the rags-to-riches story o his great-grandather Abram Hannibal. An Arican slaveboy, brought to the court o Peter the Great and adopted by the eccentrictsar, Abram Hannibal would rise to ame and ortune in the early imperialRussia. His personal journey was starkly dierent rom the ate o Aricansin other parts o Europe and the Americas. During the height o the Atlanticslave trade, Hannibal, a talented military engineer and mathematician,attained noble status and became a general in the Russian army. There was

a sad irony in his nobility, as, like most other prominent Russian aristo-crats at the time, he owned hundreds o slaves: the impoverished peasantsers. Hannibals presence in Russian history has always been surroundedby a kind o romantic aurain part due to his own unconventional lie story,but also because o the keen interest that Pushkin displayed toward hisexotic progenitor, going even so ar as to attempt to write a comprehensive(though unnished) Hannibal biography, The Arap of Peter the Great.

Pushkins ancestry resonated beyond Russias borders. While, or genera-tions o Russian and Soviet schoolchildren, Pushkin represented the tri-

umph o Russian national culture, he also attracted admiration rom themillions o people o Arican descent who saw in the exalted status bestowedon this octoroon by the Russian society a powerul argument in debunk-ing racist claims o black ineriority. Such sentiments assumed special poi-gnancy among Arican Americans due to their collective historical

experience o racism and slavery.As observed by W. E. B. Du Bois,in Jim Crow Americawhere thebiological school o racial theoryreigned supreme the act thatthis great literary gure [Pushkin]

was the result o miscegenation iso vital interest. Also o vital

interest were other examples o Russians practicing racial openness notablyout o tune with Western racial sensibilities dominant during the age osocial Darwinism. Russian liberal intelligentsiathe likes o AlexanderHerzen, Vissarion Belinsky, Nicholas Dobrolyubov, and Nicholas Cherny-shevskyviewed with an unequivocal disgust the institution o Americanslavery. Herzen and Belinsky drew some all-too-obvious comparisons

between Americas peculiar institution and the system o peasant serdomin tsarist Russia; while Chernyshevsky did more than any other Russian topopularize Harriet Beecher Stowes novel Uncle Toms Cabin. In 1858, hemailed ree copies o the book to the subscribers o the literary journalSovremennik [The Contemporary] under his editorship. At about the same

Generations o Soviet schoolchildren

learned rom an early age the

minute details o Pushkins biography,

including the rags-to-riches story o

his great-grandather Abram Hannibal.


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time that Stowes heart-wrenching portrayal o black lie in America createda literary sensation among Russias educated classes, a black American actor,

Ira Aldridge, conquered the hearts and minds o the theater-going publicin St. Petersburg and Moscow. Until his last days (he died in 1867 while ona tour o Russian-controlled Poland), Aldridge would cherish the acceptanceand recognition he ound among all classes o Russian society, as he did hisclose personal riendship with the great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.

Russia was conspicuously absent rom the European scramble or Arica,arguably too busy expanding its own Eurasian empire, and Russians oten

viewed with suspicion European imperialist adventures on the continent. Incase o Orthodox Ethiopia, the suspicion gave way to outward hostility

toward Italian invaders and an emo-tional support or Ethiopian Chris-tians and their (successul) struggleagainst European aggressors. Russiasupplied weapons to Ethiopian troops,and Russian volunteers were presentin the camp o Menelik II during theamed battle o Adwa, in which Ethi-opians deeated the Italian colonial

army and thus preserved their countrys independence. Soon ater the war,in 1896, the Russian Red Cross ounded a hospital in Addis Ababa anddispatched a team o medics to treat the Ethiopian war wounded. Anticolo-nial sentiments also ran high in Russia during the Anglo-Boer War o18991902. Throughout the war Russian society remained overwhelminglypro-Boer, and Russian volunteers and adventure-seekers trekked to South

Arica to join in the ght against British colonial domination.

itwouldbenave to romanticize the state o race relations in pre-revolu-tionary Russia. In the conquered areas o Central Asia, or example, tsaristcolonial administrations mistreated local populations and instituted segre-gationist regimes akin to those ound across colonial Arica. And the treat-ment meted out by tsarist ocials to Russias Jews ranged rom humiliat ingto murderous. Yet there exists some evidencemuch o it presented inAllison Blakelys groundbreaking study o Arican-Russian encounters,Russia and the Negro, published in 1986pointing to a society which, as a

whole, was less prejudiced in its perceptions o black people than most othercontemporary white industrial nations. Not only the celebrated Aldridge,but also other black Americans occupying ar more modest stat ions in lie,indirectly acknowledged Russias relative racial tolerance, especially whencompared with the conditions that obtained at the time in North America

Russian liberal intelligentsiathe

likes o Alexander Herzen, Vissarion

Belinsky, Nicholas Dobrolyubov,

and Nicholas Chernyshevsky

viewed with an unequivocal disgust

the institution o American slavery.


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60 Transition 100

and Western Europe. Nancy Prince o Massachusetts joined her husbandon a boat bound or Russia, where she stayed at the imperial court in St.

Petersburg during the early decades o the nineteenth century. Accordingto her memoir (A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince, pub-lished in 1850), the years she spent in Russia were a period o social andnancial success. She built a network o riendly relations in St. Petersburgand was compensated handsomely or the services she provided, in hercapacity as a maid and seamstress, to several aristocratic households. Others

would ollow in Princes steps, and, toward the end o the nineteenth cen-tury, tsarist Russia began to receive a trickle o black travelers: entrepre-neurs, circus perormers, aspiring musicians, and dramatic actors. Rumors

circulating among segments o the Arican American community paintedRussians as more accepting o blacks than were other Europeans. Theamous childrens book author and literary critic Kornei Chukovsky remem-bered spending some time in the company o a black American preacher

with whom he shared his lodgings while studying in London in the early1900s. In their conversations, the preacher observed that Russians were armore open to other races than were their ellow Europeans. He also had apeculiar explanation or this phenomenon: Russians themselves, in hisopinion, were not exactly white.

Even i the pre-revolutionary Russia attracted riendly curiosity amongsome black Americans, the Bolshevik Revolution o 1917 turned this curios-ity into a veritable ascination. The Bolsheviks arrived to power orceullyadvocating the Marxist ideals o colorblind class solidarity among theoppressed. One did not have to be a political radical to recognize that, in1917, people o color occupied the lowest ranks in the social hierarchies oEuropean, U.S., and colonial societies. An all iance then, between the ideo-logical opponents o racism and its victims, seemed as logical as it wasattractive to both. To be sure, the illiterate masses in the colonies, similarto the masses o black Americans muzzled by Jim Crow, knew preciouslittle about the new Soviet state. But the good news o such a state, oundedon principles in stark contrast to those that had dened their disadvantagedposition within their respective societies, created quite a stir among thosecolonial Aricans and especially Arican Americans who had access to theprinted word or travel. Some o these early ans o the Soviet Union hadcommunist sympathies and, in a ew cases, were even members o theCommunist Party. However, or the majority o blacks, the main attractiono the land o socialism lay less in its ideologyper se than in one particularelement: the vocierous rejection o racism and colonialism.


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withinafewyears ollowing the 1917 revolution, the rst black travelersin search o racial utopia began to arrive in Soviet Russia. This rst pre-

World War II wave consisted overwhelmingly (but not exclusively) o Ari-can Americans and Aro-Caribbeans. Their encounter and interaction withthe young Soviet society was signicant on many levels. Their very presencein the Soviet Union became an identity-building device or the Soviets, whocast much o their polemic with the West in terms o a contest or moralsuperiority. Surely, to extend acceptance and riendship to people o colorthe world over and to host some in their midst was to challenge the capitalist

adversaries on the issue o race relations, the issue where, or obvious his-torical reasons, they appeared most vulnerable. Soviet citizens might havelacked in material comorts and basic reedoms, but they could draw sat-isaction rom their newly gained status as deenders o the oppressed races.Black visitors and residents in the Soviet Union inadvertently acted as alink between the largely isolated Soviet populace and the world outside;their arrival in the U.S.S.R. was highly symbolic o the new progressiveterms on which Soviet Russia engaged the international community. As aresult, during the two pre-war decades, black sojourners in the Soviet Union

usually received exceptionally warm welcomes and ound themselves theobjects o ussy care by their Soviet hosts.

The experiences o the acclaimed bard o the Harlem Renaissance,

Claude McKay, were typical in that respect. Having arrived in Soviet Russiain late 1922, McKay immediately gained entrance to the higher echelonso the Soviet political and cultural elite. Embraced by his Russian riendsas a representat ive o the oppressed Negro race, he received truly royaltreatmentparticipating in the celebrations o the th anniversary o theOctober Revolution, delivering a special address on the Negro Question

to a Comintern Congress, and even being oered an airplane ride overPetrograd. In several travel dispatches published in the Arican Americanpress, McKay was eusive in his praise or the Russians tolerance andgoodwill, and, or years to come, memories o his magic pilgrimage toRussia would continue to excite his imagination, even when his admirationor the Soviet dogma had largely evaporated. But McKays account wasonly the rst o many such stories. Dozens o Arican Americans, and hala dozen Aricans, rom many walks o lienot just political radicalswereattracted by the promise o racial equality in the land o the Soviets. Invari-

ably, they reported nding a society measuring up to its loty ideals. Victimso housing segregation back in the States, Arican Americans enjoyedchoice hotel accommodations in Moscow and Leningrad. Not allowed toride in the whites only sections o buses and trains in places like Memphisor Philadelphia, these black visitors were stunned to discover Russians


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will ingly vacating their seats on public transport to accommodate a Negrocomrade. Russian girls, it seems, harbored ew o the racial prejudices so

omnipresent in America; most black male visitors ended up dating and/ormarrying Russian women. A young Arican American journalist romMinnesota, Homer Smith, spent almost teen years o his lie in StalinsSoviet Union. Long ater he had grown disillusioned with Soviet dogma(and managed to escape rom the U.S.S.R.), he still remembered ondly thedancing parties in the Moscow o his youth, where Russian girls would

readily ditch their Russian suitors or a chance to dance with a blackAmerican.

But aairs o the heart couldnt overshadow the public signicance o

the Soviet sojourn. For the true believers in the promise o Soviet commu-nism, the Soviet Union oered a ready political platorm and an opportunityto actively participate in the grand experiment o creating a new socialistnation. Disempowered and alienated rom the political process back home,black radicals experienced upon their arrival in the U.S.S.R. a dizzying

uplit in social status, along withconsiderable gain in political clout.

Take Otto Hall, or example. Thisson o a night watchman rom

Nebraska, resh o the boat,entered the higher echelons oSoviet power, actively participating in the ormulation o colonial policies

within the Comintern and updating Joseph Stalin, over a cup o tea, on thestate o race relations in the United States. Ottos brother Harry Haywoodachieved an even larger prominence within the Soviet political establish-ment. A graduate o the prestigious Lenin School in Moscow, Haywoodbecame one o the original sponsors o the so-called Black Belt Thesisahighly controversial 1928 Comintern initiative that envisioned the creationo an independent Negro republic in the U.S. South. While the schemeitsel came to naught, it nevertheless constituted a remarkable chapter inthe history o black nationalism in the United States. It also feshed out thespecial relationship between the Soviet and Comintern leadership and thoseblack activists who, like Harry Haywood, operated in close proximity tothe epicenter o Soviet power.

For many o these race travelers, coming to the Soviet Union was alsoattended by some tangible material benets. Homer Smith, unemployedand with ew prospects in his native Minneapolis, ound gainul employ-ment at the Moscow Post Oce. Another young Arican American, Robert

Robinson o Detroit, received a lucrative contract to work as a ne tool-maker at one o the biggest actories in Moscow. A team o young agricul-tural experts, graduates o Tuskegee and Hampton, traveled to SovietCentral Asia in the early 1930s. At the height o the Great Depression backhome, not only were they pleased with their $700-a-month contracts, but

Black visitors were stunned to

discover Russians willingly vacating

their seats on public transport to

accommodate a Negro comrade.


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some members o the groupOliver Golden, George Tynes, and JohnSutton, among themwere put in charge o local engineers and given theresources and authority to implement technological and structural innova-tions in their respective elds o expertise. Needless to say, this was a arcry rom Jim Crow America, where a black man exercising authority over

white workers would have run a risk much graver than the loss o his job.Even more satisying were the experiences o Arican-American celebrities

whose appearances in the pre-war Soviet Union were accompanied by nation-wide media coverage and mass celebratory events. In 1932, Langston Hughesled a group o young Arican Americans to participate in a propaganda movie

project,Black and White, to have been lmed in the Soviet Union. Even thoughthe lm plans would eventually all through, the members o the hapless cast(very ew o them had even the remotest connection to the world o acting),by most accounts, thoroughly enjoyed their time in the Soviet Union. Theirtravel expenses were reimbursed, they stayed at the best Moscow hotels,

Human rights or Negroes? Well, take a seat, lets talk!

Source:

Krokodil, no. 18

(June 1978), p. 16


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64 Transition 100

traveled to a Black Sea resort, and got paid handsomely despite the act thatthey never got to act, and the movie never got produced. Langston Hughes,

by ar the biggest name on the roster, stood to benet more than others. Byhis own admission, during the several months he spent in the U.S.S.R., hemade more in advances on his writing than in the course o his whole careerup to that point. Like Claude McKay ten years beore him, Hughes experi-enced a dizzying status enhancement. Treated like a true celebrity, he pub-

lished and traveled widely, presented torapt and enthusiastic audiences, andbecame an immediate center o awningattention, whether among the Moscow

literati or the cotton growers in Uzbeki-stan. Hughes celebrated memoir, IWonder as I Wander, is to a signicantextent the travelogue o his Soviet odys-sey and a testimony o his ascination

with the Soviet Union. This ascination was ully shared by another greatArican American, the actor and singer Paul Robeson. Probably more thanany other oreign celebrity, Robesons would become a household name inthe Soviet Union. Beloved by Soviet ideologues and common people alike,

Paul Robeson was virtually adopted by the Soviet public as a national culturalicon. Robeson seems to have been seduced by this adoration, developing adeep personal connection to the Soviet Union (he even placed his son in aSoviet high school) and stirring controversy by declaring Americas Cold Warrival to be his adopted motherland.

the sovietsrelishedtheir antiracist image. Soviet lm and literature promi-

nently eatured the themes o racial tolerance and multiethnic coexistence,whereby Soviet openness was usually contrasted with Western bigotry. Themost popular Soviet lm o the 1930s, The Circus, presented to cheeringaudiences the story (purely ctional) o a white American woman and herblack child escaping American racism and discovering acceptance andhappiness in the land o socialism. In the popular poem Mr. Twister, bySamuil Marshak, learned by heart by millions o Soviet schoolchildren, theSoviet society perorms an important corrective unction by teaching apoignant lesson in racial tolerance to a cartoonishly nasty American capital-

ist. The capitalist o Marshaks poem (Mr. Twister the Millionaire) decideson a whim to tour the U.S.S.R. Having arrived in Leningrad and checkedinto a prestigious hotel, he is shocked to realize that the hotel providesaccommodations to black guests. Appalled at this violation o racial hier-archy, Mr. Twister demands all-white accommodations or himsel and

Hughes celebrated memoir,

I Wonder as I Wander, is to a

signicant extent the travelogue

o his Soviet odyssey and a

testimony o his ascination

with the Soviet Union.


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his amily, only to discover that none are to be ound in this land o racialegalitarianism. The humiliated racist spends a most uncomortable night

sleeping on his bags in a hotel lobby beore feeing to a steamboat that willtake him back to the country where he can indulge his bigotry. The mes-sage o Marshaks poem did not all on dea ears: black visitors cherishedthe time spent within a society ostensibly ree o Western racism, and Sovietcitizens saw in their guests goodwill yet another conrmation o the righ-teousness o their cause.

There was a strong element o romance in these early encounters betweenblack and red: initial inatuation, excitement, nave idealization o the other.

The emotionality o the rst encounter, though, was not to be repeated. Under

Stalins iron rule, the Soviet Union underwent a metamorphosisits early revo-lutionary idealism and ery enthusiasm giving way to heavy-handed bureau-cratization and cynical pragmatism in the conduct o oreign policy. More andmore, the U.S.S.R. was acting less like a revolutionary orce and more like yetanother nation-state, and, according to a growing number o contemporaryblack observers, a white nation-state at that. The antiracist and anticolonialrhetoric emanating rom the Soviet Unionproceeded unabated, but the deeds occa-sionally ailed to match the words. So the

Soviets reportedly shelved theBlack andWhite lm project in anticipation o theestablishment o diplomatic relations withthe United States. During the Italian inva-sion o Ethiopia in 1935, the U.S.S.R.

vocierously condemned the ascist aggression in Arica, yet it soon becameknown that behind the scenes it was supplying Mussolinis Italy with oil andgrain. And then came what a bitter editorial in The Crisis called The GreatBetrayal o the Nazi-Soviet Pact o 1939. Only the most hard-headed o blackCommunists could accept the necessity o an alliance between the sel-pro-claimed champions o the oppressed non-white races and the most viciouslyracist regime on earth. By the outbreak o World War II, the majority o blacksojourners had let the Soviet Union, leaving a smattering o mixed-blooddescendants, many o whom would constitute the core o a small but culturallysignicant diasporic community o black Russians.

Some three decades separated the rst and the second wave o black arriv-als in the Soviet Union. These migrations occurred within strikingly dierenthistorical contexts and under circumstances with very little in common. Thepost-revolutionary wave was almost exclusively Arican American and con-

sisted o people desperately trying to arm their dignity in the land rumoredto be ree o racism. On the orce o these euphoric expectations, some o theearly arrivals joined the Communist Party or became Communist sympathiz-ers and ellow travelers. While many remained non-ideological and suciently

The antiracist and anticolonial

rhetoric emanating rom the

Soviet Union proceeded unabated,

but the deeds occasionally

ailed to match the words.


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66 Transition 100

pragmatic, their positive experiences in the Soviet Union made them, i notaccepting o, at least sympathetic to Soviet ideals.

The second wave originated largely in the newly independent nations opostcolonial Arica. It consisted o young (mostly male) students in search oaordable education. They embarked on their travels in a post-World War IIgeopolitical milieushaped by the disintegration o old European empiresand dominated by a Cold War stando between the Soviet Union and theUnited States. Many o these young Aricans came rom locations awash withnationalist politics, ull o pride or their recently liberated nations, and, as aresult, they were less inclined to accept uncritically Soviet patronage. Just astheir young countries were attempting to navigate (not always successully) a

third way, outside the parameters o the superpower contest, so did they seetheir presence in the Soviet Union as more an opportunity than a source oloyalty to the host nation. Besides, they entered a society that since its earlyexperimental days had grown decidedly more introverted. During the war,Stalin had revived Russian nationalism and appealed to it consistently in orderto raise the ghting spirit o the nation. Suspicious o possible collaborationbetween the advancing German armies and some o the ethnic groups allingunder their sway, the regime singled out several ethnic minoritiesthe Crimean

Tartars, the Chechens, the Ingush, and the Germansor collective punish-

ment and expulsion to the ar reaches o the Soviet Union. The post-war yearswere marked by political campaigns (some o them quite homicidal) exploitingRussian national pride and eeding the growing xenophobia. During his last

years, Stalin launched a series o paranoia-ueled attacks on a mythical cabalo rootless cosmopolites, accused o harboring not only anti-Soviet but alsoanti-Russian designs. The arrested, expelled, and ostracized more oten thannot sported Jewish names.

theprofoundlyisolationistSoviet Union o the late-Stalin and immediatepost-Stalin years exhibited ew o the earlier internationalist trappingstheComintern-directed attempts to export the Bolshevik revolution to theremotest corners o the globe, along with the Comintern itsel, had longsince been abandoned. It took Stalins death, the rise o a less medieval andmore humane Khrushchev, and his subsequent denunciation o Stalinscrimes to pry slightly open the hermetically shut Soviet Union. The Inter-national Youth Festival, celebrated in Moscow in the summer o 1957,

remains a major milestone in the history o Soviet advancement towardgreater openness.

In his recent memoir,Afrikanskaya Moskva [Arica in Moscow], the doyeno Soviet Arican Studies, Apollon Davidson, remembers the cultural andemotional shock that the estival produced in him and his ellow Muscovites.


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All o a sudden the drabness and grayness o Moscow dissipated with theonslaught o color. Young people rom dozens o countries descended uponthe Soviet capital and turned it into a stage set or the celebration o youth andcultural diversity. Aricans gured prominently among the delegates. By manyaccounts, Arican guests enjoyed wide (and wild) popularity during the esti-

val. The hotel reserved or Arican delegations quickly turned into a vibrantsocial spot, the liveliest place in town, with Soviet youngsters (especially

girls) crowding its entrance in the hope o getting acquainted with the exoticnewcomers. Soviet authorities had planned the estival to showcase Soviet

values, but the event overwhelmed them and produced some broad andunintended consequences. During those summer weeks o 1957, millions oSoviet citizens received their rst exposure to liestyles, mannerisms,

You were asking or my hand? Now take this!

Source:

Krokodil, no.

30 (October

1976), p. 16


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68 Transition 100

aesthetics, cultural expressions, and political debates that contrasted mostsharply with the Soviet everyday. The estival itsel lasted or only about two

weeks, but its eects would linger on or decades; it created an openingthrough which oreign ideas and art orms began to seep into the Soviet soci-ety. And it also reintroduced Aricans to the country whose rulers continuedto stake their international reputation on a commitment to the struggles againstracism and the remnants o colonial rule.

In the atermath o the 1957 estival, the Soviet government began toextend generous educational scholarships to students rom Arica. The initialtrickle grew into a food, and, eventually, thousands o young people rom thecontinent and other parts o the developing world would pursue education at

Soviet institutions o higher learning, especially the Lumumba University inMoscow, created expressly or this purpose. Ater decades o isolation, Sovietcitizens once again ound themselves ace-to-ace with a colorul cast o exotic

visitors. But, even more importantly, they were now acing an entirely newphenomenon: the presence in their midst o the growing population o oreign-ers who shared with them the space o their cities and their educational institu-tions, yet by and large remained outside the system.

theMajorityofArican students cared little or Soviet ideologyas ar asthey were concerned, there wasnt much symbolic or emotional signicanceto their arrival in the U.S.S.R. The task at hand was to seek not racialequality but, rather, an aordable quality education. Consequently, attemptsby Soviet authorities to inuse educational programs with ideology or toadd courses in Marxism/Leninism or Communist Party history to the cur-riculum were usually met with suspicion and sometimes outright hostility.

Controversies pitting Arican students against university administrations,

Soviet authorities, or Soviet student bodies arose with some regularity andresulted on occasion in the exodus or expulsion o troublesome Aricans.Such incidents also received in-depth coverage in the Western media, which,in the best traditions o the Cold War, was only too eager to expose Sovietdeciencies. One particularly notorious episode occurred in December o1963, when dozens o Aricans protested (in Moscows Red Square) the deatho a ellow Ghanaian student whose demise, ruled a drunken accident by theSoviet police, was rumored to have been a racially motivated homicide. Anunsanctioned public expression o dissent violated the unspoken (but strictly

enorced) rules o public conduct in the Soviet Union. Very ew Soviet citizensat the time would have dared so fagrantly to challenge the authorities. The1963 March on the Kremlin and the subsequent submission o a ormalpetition by Arican students to the Soviet governmentalong with a numbero similar later incidentschallenged most unambiguously the seemingly


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unassailable laws guiding political discourse in the U.S.S.R. Such uninhibitedpolitical actions on the part o Arican students put the Soviet establishment

in a tight spot. Fearul o antagonizing the much-courted Third World, theSoviets, in dealing with Arican students and the periodical fare-ups o theirdiscontent, exhibited an unusual degree o fexibility. In the 1963 demonstra-tion, as in the case o later protest petitions in 1965 and 1975, Soviet authoritieswere willing to hear out the grievances presented by disgruntled Aricanstudents, a democratic privilege not extended to the Soviet population at large.

Those who, like Nigerian Theophilus Okonkwo or Andrew Richard Amarand Stanley Omar Okullo o Uganda, conronted the ocialdom head-on,andan even worse transgressionvented their grievances to the Western

press, could expect to be singled out or public denunciation and expulsionrom the university and the country. However, compared to the punishmentsroutinely meted out to Soviet dissidents, the rebels among Arican studentsin the U.S.S.R. received a airly mild treatment by the powers that be.

By engaging in a direct debate with the Soviet system, Aricans inadver-tently subverted it. Their place withinthe Soviet society, then, was peculiarlyambiguous. Having entered as the pre-sumptive allies o the system, they in

act carved out or themselves a sepa-rate and highly unusual spacea placeorelativefreedom rom the political andcultural constraints o Soviet lie day-to-day. Compared to an average Sovietcitizen, Arican students in the U.S.S.R. enjoyed greater reedoms o expres-sion and movement, reedoms that they did not hesitate to claim. Many othem arrived rom settings more cosmopolitan than the Soviet Union, weremultilingual and usually better o (due to higher stipends) than their Sovietpeers, and had opportunities or oreign travel. As a result, Aricans o thesecond wave oten acted as the conduits o Westernization, giving their Sovietriends, ellow students, and girl riends their rst taste o things oreign: jazzand rock n roll records, blue jeans, popular magazines, books in a variety oEuropean languages, etc. Living in Moscow in the early 1960s, Ugandan

Andrew Amar noted the Russian students ascination with jazz music andtheir awareness o its historical roots:

One o the things which oten brought us together with

the Russian students was listening to modern jazz music.Large numbers o them appreciated the better kind o jazzand also realized and acknowledged that it had developedrom the olk music o the Arican people.

Fearul o antagonizing the much-

courted Third World, the Soviets,

in dealing with Arican students

and the periodical fare-ups o

their discontent, exhibited an

unusual degree o fexibility.


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70 Transition 100

With its strong emphasis on improvisation and ree spontaneous expres-sion, jazz orgedas rock music did latera special kind o camaraderiebetween its listeners, one that knew no borders or ideological divides. Jazzas an art orm, then, was bound to run aoul o Soviet authorities, a act

duly noted by the observant Amar: It was really the popularity that thistype o music gained among Russian students, thus bringing them into closecontact and riendship with American and Arican students, that reallyconvinced the Soviet authorities to condemn this kind o music.

Source:

Krokodil, no.

17 (October

1964), p. 7

(Chic-Modern:Soviet cartoonists mocked the jungle nature of jazz and rock music)


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clearly, theplaceMento thousands o young Aricans within the Sovietsociety, something that had been conceived by the Soviet ocialdom as apart o a winning Cold War strategy, had some unintended political andcultural consequences. Not only did Aricans, by dint o their oreignnessand detachment rom the Soviet mainstream, remain above the system,but they also provided inspiration to the burgeoning Soviet counterculture.Being black in the U.S.S.R. oten implied an intrinsic link to unconventionalpolitical and cultural tropesthose o liberation, youthul rebellion, eman-cipation rom the strictures o convention. Arica, without a doubt, supplied

its air share o dedicated Marxists and staunch Soviet allies, but blackcausesanticolonial struggles, the civil rights movement in the United

States, and black liberation in generalhad a way o getting out rom underthe harness o Soviet patronage. The post-Stalin generation o young Sovietintellectuals was ond o evoking Arican themes in their works. The popu-lar poets Yevgenii Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky, generally viewedas moderately iconoclastic, looked at Arica with longing; they imagined itas a poetic batt leground or reedoma reedom as enticing as it was con-tagious. To them, and to the underground rock bard Boris Grebenshchikov,

Arica oered a contrasting image to the Soviet experience o everyday.One o Grebenshchikovs early albums,Radio Africa, is set to the sound oshort-wave radio statican unambiguous evocation o Aricas remotenessand oreignness, its antasy-land status among those dreaming o an escaperom the drabness and restrictiveness o Soviet existence. And this escapismmight be the reason why one o the pioneers o the late-Soviet underground,musician, actor, and installation artist Sergei Bugaev, became known tothousands o his ans under the monikerAfrika.

This ascination with Arica extended into theperestroika [restructuring]

period o the late 1980s. Arica-related themes and even black characterseatured prominently in such cinematic hits o the late-1980s asASSA (dir.Sergei Soloviev, 1988) andLittle Vera (dir. Vasil ii Pichul, 1989). Both lmsemployed grotesque imagery to fesh out and critique the essentials o Sovietexperienceits dreariness and lack o color, its insular nature, an apparentdisconnect rom the outside world. AricansArican-Russians, to be morepreciseunction in these lms to highlight the absurdity and strangenesso lie in the U.S.S.R., where the loty rhetoric o internationalism otenailed to capture the reality o Arican-Soviet encounters. Aricans in the

perestroika lms are invariably juxtaposed with the Soviet system, used asan artistic oil to reveal the systems deciencies. They symbolize Sovietideals gone awry. InASSA, we meet a rebellious youth (played by Bugaev-

Arika) who goes by Boy Bananan and his black Russian riend. The pairembraces aesthetics and liestyles alien to the Soviet regime. Arica or them


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72 Transition 100

is a countercultural idea, a constant point o reerence, a source o artisticinspiration and irony permeating their cat-and-mouse games with the estab-

lishment.Little Vera, probably the most-watched Soviet lm o all timeitcontained the rst explicitly sexual scene ever to have been depicted in aSoviet moviesimilarly makes use o this idea o Arica to satirize thehypocrisy o the regime. In one particularly tongue-in-cheek scene, the

viewer is brought into a typically shabby Soviet fat. We see a little blackboy, seated in ront o a TV, oblivious to his immediate surroundings andcompletely engrossed in a popular childrens cartoon. At one point, thecartoon characters, three vicious-looking but highly likable pirates, breakinto a light-hearted song about Arica:

Little kids,No matter what you do,Dont even think ofGoing to Africa for walks.

Africa is dangerous,Africa is horrible . . .

The incongruity o the situationa black Russian child consuming a cultural

production that treats Arica as an exotic, dangerous, and slightly ridiculousunknowncould not ail to register with viewers. The black boys outwardappearance made his absorption in the cartoon highly humorous. Yet thesignicance o this brie cinematic encounter with Arica went ar beyonda passing movie moment.Little Vera gives us a glimpse into the popularSoviet imagery o Arica and alerts the viewer to Aricas presence in late-Soviet public and cultural domains. Yes, Arica is o a somewhat unknownquality, but not entirely so. The little boy in the movie didnt just materializeout o thin air amidst the clutter o Soviet domestic lieeven i some o the

viewers might have thought that to be the casehis mother was white, hencethe ather had to be o Arican descent. His precise identity is let to ourimaginationa oreign sailor, an Arican student, a romantic guerilla-typein training in the U.S.S.R., or maybe even a visiting black American musi-cian (the partisans o Soviet counterculture worshipped the likes o Louis

Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, and others).There is plenty o irony in the scene described above. And its also sadly

ironic that, ater decades o antiracist campaigns, the late-Soviet society andits post-Soviet Russian successor would succumb to an epidemic o widespreadracism and racially motivated violence. There seems to have existed a certain

disconnect between the internationalist ideals trumpeted by the Soviet stateand Aricas real place within the Soviet society. The Soviet states concern orthe oppressed races easily crossed over into heavy-handed paternalism, whichon occasion bore remarkable similarities to the nineteenth-century Europeanthrust to civilize Arican savages. Arican residents in the U.S.S.R. sometimes


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complained that the Soviet popular culture and propaganda objectied themas wards o the state in need o support and protection. Soviet cartoons,lms, and childrens literature inantilized Aricans, presenting them as docileand ready to please, but also gullible and prone to seek pleasure rather than

work. In the minds o millions o Soviet children, Aricans became oreverassociated with the careree existence on the ctional island oChunga Changathe subject o a popular animated short by the same name. The little blackchildren populating this miracle-island apparently spent their days dancingaway and carrying on a catchy tune:

What a miracle-island, miracle-islandLife is so easy hereLife is so easy hereChunga Changa!

Hello, old hag! Double moonshine with ice and tonic!

Source:

Krokodil, no. 4

(October 1985),

front page


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74 Transition 100

Were happy day in and day out:Just munching on coconuts and bananas

Just munching on coconuts and bananasChunga Changa!

The subliminal message o the cartoon and other similar productions wasnot lost on the audience: Aricans were cheerul and entertaining, riendso dance and song, and strangers to more exacting types o labor. As longas the Soviet economy was grinding onor at least pretended semi-success-ully to be doing sosuch condescending representations o Arica and

Aricans did little more than evoke amusement and even sympathy in the

general public. But with the Soviet Union entering a period o precipitousdecline during the 1980s, especially toward the end o the decade, attitudesbegan to change.

Mikhail Gorbachevs reorms opened the foodgates or devastatingcriticisms and a reassessment o Soviet historical experience. Glasnost [open-ness] also meant that Soviet journalists and politicians now elt ree to passsevere judgments on the system that beore had been largely shielded romdomestic censure. Soviet economic ailures were now routinely blamed onthe deciencies o the system itsel and its impractical naturepresumably

maniesting itsel in a tendency to provide too much aid or Arica andwaste national treasure on black-skinned loaers. Soviet society, aectedby economic distress and an accelerating political transormation, lashedout against the outsiders, especially those deemed complicit in the nationsdecline. Aricans and Arican Russians began to report a steep rise in thenumber o racist incidents. The country that used to harangue the worldon the values o racial tolerance and ethnic coexistence was now miredever deeper in xenophobia and a variety o interethnic conficts. Aricansended up in a particularly unpleasant xviewed with suspicion or evenoutright hostility across the political spectrum. For the apologists o theregime, Aricans had come to be associated with Western infuencesabunch o ungrateul subversives who sponged on the Soviet economy onlyto drag it down later. But, remarkably, racism had also taken root amongthe so-called liberal intelligentsia, the educated class most critical o theSoviet Union. These avatars operestroika blamed Aricans or impartingleverage to the hated Soviet system. Arican wars o liberation, unded bythe Soviets, or antiracist campaigns in the West, received vocierous Sovietsupport. Soviet dissidents harbored deep resentment toward the type o

Western radical represented by Arican American Communist Dr. Angela

Davis, who, while persecuted in her native land, was accorded a hero statusby the Soviet ocialdom. Such gures were viewed as providing legitimacyand moral high ground to the immoralU.S.S.R. Thus the anti-Soviet intel-lectuals ell into the trap o accepting at ace value the old, and much dis-proved, Soviet adage o a natural alliance between the land o socialism


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and the worlds non-white populations. Sadly enough, black residents in thelate Soviet Union oten ound themselves trapped between these two com-

petingyet equally unriendlyinterpretations o their agency within theSoviet society, an unortunate tendency that has stretched into the post-Soviet era in Russia with some pernicious and even deadly results.

Myoldschoolriend called me several months ago (oh, the wonders oGoogle . . . ). The conversation meandered and never quite picked upithas been more than twenty years since we last saw each other, and duringthat time our lives proceeded in decidedly dierent geographical and proes-sional directions. He has done well or himsel though, having been recentlyappointed state prosecutor in one o the major Russian cities. Among otherthings, I asked him about the explosion o racial violence (physical attackson and occasional murders o non-Russian-looking people in the streetso the new Russia). He scoed at the question: Stu happens, like anywhereelse, but it always gets overreported in the West. When it does happen weprosecute . . . mercilessly. I then reminded him about that photographerstudio incident rom our youththe drizzly Leningrad evening, our rst

Soviet passports, an awkward conrontation with the black man who sud-denly brought up Pushkin. There was a short pause on the other end o theline. Nope, didnt ring a bell; he didnt remember. . . . Somehow I didntthink he would.

black in the u.s.s.r. africans, african americans, and the soviet

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