If you get a kick out of experiencing intense and disorienting contrasts, try that route. My chil... more If you get a kick out of experiencing intense and disorienting contrasts, try that route. My childhood friend Alex drove me to Helsinki from St. Pete. Alex was driving like a madman-honking incessantly, tailgating, yelling at slower traffic. Just past Vyborg a traffic policeman signaled us to stop. Alex slowed the car to a crawl but didn't quite stop it. We continued to roll along the curb, with the police officer trotting next to the driver's side window and Alex feeding him hundred-ruble notes: one, two, three. .. Enough? No? Okay. .. four, five. .. Eventually the cop (who never stopped jogging next to the moving vehicle) gave a sign that he'd received enough and wished us a happy onward journey. "These greedy assholes," grumbled Alex as he floored the gas pedal. Soon after, we crossed the Finnish border and the minute we did Alex miraculously turned into a sensible just-under-the-speed-limit driver. I looked at him surprised. "You see, it's a civilized country, they got laws, and you can't really bribe anyone," explained my friend. We both sighed, he-with visible regret, I-with some relief. My flight was early in the morning, and we slept in Alex's Audi hatchback parked in some field, not far from the airport. Ah, those childhood friendships, very special. .. I had a long layover in Amsterdam, which was great, because I was able to drop by another childhood friend Dina and her husband's place on Keerkstraat and take a shower. Florian was watching the news, which happened to be from Nigeria. Nigeria was very much in the news at the time due to the recent mysterious death of the country's dictator, General Sani Abacha. Florian looked worried and suggested that instead of flying off to Lagos I stay with them in Amsterdam. Florian and Dina are among the most hospitable people I know; they are always hosting someone, sometimes for months on end. It's been twenty years, but they are still at it. It would've been nice to stay with them, but I really couldn't. We hugged and I left for the airport to board my flight to Lagos. The first few weeks in Nigeria were surreal, exhausting, maddening, exciting.
In the early 1970s, the plight of a charismatic Black American communist and philosophy professor... more In the early 1970s, the plight of a charismatic Black American communist and philosophy professor Angela Davis, put on trial in the United States for her alleged involvement in a courtroom shootout in California, galvanized international public opinion. A massive publicity campaign in support of Angela Davis resonated across the globe and drew in millions of volunteers and sympathizers. The nations of the communist bloc, led by the Soviet Union, were particularly active in rallying their citizens in defense of a jailed American radical. In 1970-1972, Davis became a household name throughout the Soviet Union (but also in East Germany, Cuba, Poland, and other socialist nations). The "Free Angela Davis" campaign was unprecedented in scope and left a lasting mark on the collective memory of the citizens of the Soviet Union and its socialist satellites. Such was the impact of this propaganda juggernaut that decades later the image of Angela Davis remained current as a pop-cultural phenomenon across the former Soviet spaces and a symbol of unrealized and often conflicting aspirations towards freedom.
By far, by far he was the most dazzling, the most charismatic man of the cohort. Just a couple of... more By far, by far he was the most dazzling, the most charismatic man of the cohort. Just a couple of years older than the rest of us, Arthur comported himself with suave dignity. He was tall, lanky, mischievous-looking, with broad, fashionably stooped shoulders. A slight overbite rendered his mouth a perpetual sensual pout. He spoke slowly, deliberately, in a deep baritone ("what a beautiful velvety voice, " my grandma would note each time he called me at home), which presented a strange and alluring contrast to his youthful looks. Arthur advocated self-reliance and independence from parents. He was the only person I knew who rented his own apartment and visited his parents on the weekends. Even though not Jewish he worshipped his mother with whom, he insisted, he conversed in French, the language in which he claimed uency. He dressed with studied and confusing shabbiness-confusing because even his threadbare suit t him snugly; he always looked stylish. He was a fartsovschik-a smooth, black-market operator who haunted the hotels and restaurants frequented by foreigners with whom in engaged in mysterious commercial transactions. By his own admission he got a particular satisfaction out of "playing on contrasts"-usually coming to class wearing a beat-up pair of shapeless Skorohod shoes, but then showing up the next day at the CP History seminar sporting brand new Swedish sneakers and the impossibly cool Lee jeans. Arthur worshipped late-nineteenth-century French poets and German automobile engineering. He despised "Sovok, " but his objections to the Soviet regime were not of a political nature, at least not outwardly. He treated my dissident protestations with slight contempt. "You see, " he would say, "you keep whining about freedom and various Sakharovs, but you really are a pawn of the system. You wear crap, you take money from your parents, if you ever get a date what are you gonna do with the girl? Can you pick her up in a car (even in a Zaporozhets)? take her to a restaurant? bribe the bouncer and get her in a bar at some Intourist hotel? No? I didn't think so. What am I even talking about. .. you've never been to a restaurant, you'll never own a car. " "Listen, " he would continue, "the problem with this regime is not that they lock up the occasional dissident, the problem is the complete, total lack of quality. is fucking country is built on crap and manufactures crap. In huge quantities. What? the Hermitage? Who fucking needs the Hermitage when the best they can do is steal a Fiat design and even then fuck it up and produce some piece of Zhiguli junk? Stop listening to the BBC, learn to be a man. " Easier said than done. My one foray onto the "Galyora"-the second-oor gallery at the shopping center Gostiny Dvor, a place where the illicit trading business was conducted by an array of shady characters-resulted in a loss of y rubles and any further ambition to be a fartsovschik. (I also spent a night at the nearby police station, puzzled by the seeming intimacy of the interactions between the area drunks and prostitutes and their uniformed captors.) By the second semester Arthur and I had settled into a strange sort of friendship with Arthur playing the role of an older and far more experienced comrade who recognized both the potential and the many limitations of his protégé. I continued to listen to the BBC and accept money from my parents. My love life tended toward White Nights-romantic and therefore unglamorous. Arthur continued to regale us with the stories of his entrepreneurial successes and amorous conquests; his commitment to materiality had evolved into an elaborate personal philosophy of consumption. While clearly cherishing our friendship, he nevertheless cultivated a distinct separateness, a strategic compartmentalizing of his social engagements. I never met his parents or any of his numerous girlfriends. at is, until he moved in with Nika.
This article draws on the archival records of the United States Consulate in Riga, Latvia, during... more This article draws on the archival records of the United States Consulate in Riga, Latvia, during the interwar period and other primary sources to reconstruct the rites of passage by African American citizens of the USA traveling to and from the Soviet Union. In the absence of established diplomatic relations between the USA and the USSR (until 1933), the US legation in Riga served as a popular entry point for American tourists and contract workers attracted by the mystique and job opportunities of the first socialist state. The consular records of the US legation in Riga contain a wealth of materials related to some of these travels. In the course of formal interviews with consular officials, US citizens, including the minority of black visitors, revealed remarkable details of their Soviet odysseys. The archival records bring to life a unique story of 'race tourism' by African Americans to the first socialist state and thus provide a rare insight into the early Soviet society and its accepted attitudes toward racial difference; and such accounts are usually juxtaposed with an eviscerating critique of North American and Western racism during the interwar period.
As this article is being revised for final submission to the editor a small cohort of human right... more As this article is being revised for final submission to the editor a small cohort of human rights organizations in Russia are preparing to stage a ―March Against Hatred‖ in St. Petersburg. 2 The event organizers hope to attract public attention to the scourge of racial bigotry and xenophobia afflicting post-Soviet Russia, an epidemic of hatred that has left in its wake dozens of innocent victims – from African students, subjected to physical assaults and harassment in the streets of Russian cities, to Russia's own ethnic minorities, openly abused and publicly humiliated, to murdered human rights activists and scholars. A recent study conducted among Africans residing in Moscow has revealed the staggering dimensions of the problem: almost sixty percent of those polled had experienced racially-motivated violence. 3 Neither the Russian government nor the general public seem to be prepared to so much as acknowledge this unfolding crisis of race relations in a country that in a not-so-distant past used to stake its international reputation on a vociferous campaign against racism. It is reasonable to expect that the march in St. Petersburg, planned by such groups as the African Union of Russia and a veteran human rights organization Memorial, will attract scant media attention inside Russia. If previous protests of this kind are any indication the turnout for the march will be pitifully low and its participants and their message are likely to be met with indifference, if not mockery, from the passers-by. After decades of antiracist and anti-imperialist propaganda during the Soviet rule, post-socialist Russia and its citizens exhibit little taste for internationalist and egalitarian causes. The purpose of this article is to contextualize the rise of racial intolerance in post-Soviet Russia by examining some of its historical and cultural roots. I argue that the ideas of race and racial difference entertained by many modern-day Russians were formed to a large extent through their encounters with and official and popular representations of Africans residing in the Soviet Union, most of them young men who, from 1957 onwards, traveled to the USSR to pursue affordable higher education. Their presence amidst the Soviet society and their interaction with both the Soviet system and Soviet citizens would make a profound impact on the common perceptions of racial difference still resonating across the former Soviet spaces. The Khrushchevian " thaw " and the 1957 Youth Festival Following Nikita Khrushchev's ascent to power in the post-Stalin Soviet Union, at first just a few and eventually hundreds and even thousands of young Africans began to take advantage of generous educational scholarships extended to them by the Soviet government. The arrangement, much trumpeted by Soviet media and its foreign mouthpieces, was essentially a
African presence in Russia predated the Bolshevik takeover in 1917. Th e arrival of the new Commu... more African presence in Russia predated the Bolshevik takeover in 1917. Th e arrival of the new Communist rule with its attendant vociferous anti-racist and anti-colonial propaganda campaigns enhanced the earlier perceptions of Russia as a society relatively free of racial bias, a place of multiethnic coexistence. As a result dozens of black, mostly Afro-Caribbean and African-American, travellers fl ocked to the " Red Mecca " during the fi rst two decades of its existence. Some of those arrivals were driven by the ideology; however, the majority of them were simply searching for a place of racial equality, free of Western racism. To an extent their euphoric expectations would be realized as the black visitors to Soviet Russia were usually accorded a warm welcome and granted the opportunities for professional and personal fulfi llment that were manifestly absent in their countries of origin. Th e second wave of black migration to the Soviet Union was quantitatively and qualitatively diff erent from the early prewar arrivals. It also took place in the context of the new geopolitical reality of the Cold War. After the 1957 Youth Festival in Moscow, the Soviet Union under Khrushchev opened its doors to hundreds, and eventually to thousands, of students from the Th ird World, many of them from Africa. By extending generous educational scholarships to young Africans, the Soviet Union sought to reaffi rm its international-ist credentials and also curry favor with the newly independent African states. Th e members of this new diasporic community hailed predominantly from the African continent. If the Soviets had hoped for a major propaganda coup, their hopes were not entirely realised. As a propaganda weapon African students tended to jam and even to backfi re. Instead of becoming the symbols of Soviet internationalist eff ort, they came to symbolise Westernization and " foreign infl uences. " Keywords African Americans and students from Africa in the Soviet Union, Cold War, Lumumba University, Soviet popular culture, xenophobia in Russia, Comintern
If you get a kick out of experiencing intense and disorienting contrasts, try that route. My chil... more If you get a kick out of experiencing intense and disorienting contrasts, try that route. My childhood friend Alex drove me to Helsinki from St. Pete. Alex was driving like a madman-honking incessantly, tailgating, yelling at slower traffic. Just past Vyborg a traffic policeman signaled us to stop. Alex slowed the car to a crawl but didn't quite stop it. We continued to roll along the curb, with the police officer trotting next to the driver's side window and Alex feeding him hundred-ruble notes: one, two, three. .. Enough? No? Okay. .. four, five. .. Eventually the cop (who never stopped jogging next to the moving vehicle) gave a sign that he'd received enough and wished us a happy onward journey. "These greedy assholes," grumbled Alex as he floored the gas pedal. Soon after, we crossed the Finnish border and the minute we did Alex miraculously turned into a sensible just-under-the-speed-limit driver. I looked at him surprised. "You see, it's a civilized country, they got laws, and you can't really bribe anyone," explained my friend. We both sighed, he-with visible regret, I-with some relief. My flight was early in the morning, and we slept in Alex's Audi hatchback parked in some field, not far from the airport. Ah, those childhood friendships, very special. .. I had a long layover in Amsterdam, which was great, because I was able to drop by another childhood friend Dina and her husband's place on Keerkstraat and take a shower. Florian was watching the news, which happened to be from Nigeria. Nigeria was very much in the news at the time due to the recent mysterious death of the country's dictator, General Sani Abacha. Florian looked worried and suggested that instead of flying off to Lagos I stay with them in Amsterdam. Florian and Dina are among the most hospitable people I know; they are always hosting someone, sometimes for months on end. It's been twenty years, but they are still at it. It would've been nice to stay with them, but I really couldn't. We hugged and I left for the airport to board my flight to Lagos. The first few weeks in Nigeria were surreal, exhausting, maddening, exciting.
In the early 1970s, the plight of a charismatic Black American communist and philosophy professor... more In the early 1970s, the plight of a charismatic Black American communist and philosophy professor Angela Davis, put on trial in the United States for her alleged involvement in a courtroom shootout in California, galvanized international public opinion. A massive publicity campaign in support of Angela Davis resonated across the globe and drew in millions of volunteers and sympathizers. The nations of the communist bloc, led by the Soviet Union, were particularly active in rallying their citizens in defense of a jailed American radical. In 1970-1972, Davis became a household name throughout the Soviet Union (but also in East Germany, Cuba, Poland, and other socialist nations). The "Free Angela Davis" campaign was unprecedented in scope and left a lasting mark on the collective memory of the citizens of the Soviet Union and its socialist satellites. Such was the impact of this propaganda juggernaut that decades later the image of Angela Davis remained current as a pop-cultural phenomenon across the former Soviet spaces and a symbol of unrealized and often conflicting aspirations towards freedom.
By far, by far he was the most dazzling, the most charismatic man of the cohort. Just a couple of... more By far, by far he was the most dazzling, the most charismatic man of the cohort. Just a couple of years older than the rest of us, Arthur comported himself with suave dignity. He was tall, lanky, mischievous-looking, with broad, fashionably stooped shoulders. A slight overbite rendered his mouth a perpetual sensual pout. He spoke slowly, deliberately, in a deep baritone ("what a beautiful velvety voice, " my grandma would note each time he called me at home), which presented a strange and alluring contrast to his youthful looks. Arthur advocated self-reliance and independence from parents. He was the only person I knew who rented his own apartment and visited his parents on the weekends. Even though not Jewish he worshipped his mother with whom, he insisted, he conversed in French, the language in which he claimed uency. He dressed with studied and confusing shabbiness-confusing because even his threadbare suit t him snugly; he always looked stylish. He was a fartsovschik-a smooth, black-market operator who haunted the hotels and restaurants frequented by foreigners with whom in engaged in mysterious commercial transactions. By his own admission he got a particular satisfaction out of "playing on contrasts"-usually coming to class wearing a beat-up pair of shapeless Skorohod shoes, but then showing up the next day at the CP History seminar sporting brand new Swedish sneakers and the impossibly cool Lee jeans. Arthur worshipped late-nineteenth-century French poets and German automobile engineering. He despised "Sovok, " but his objections to the Soviet regime were not of a political nature, at least not outwardly. He treated my dissident protestations with slight contempt. "You see, " he would say, "you keep whining about freedom and various Sakharovs, but you really are a pawn of the system. You wear crap, you take money from your parents, if you ever get a date what are you gonna do with the girl? Can you pick her up in a car (even in a Zaporozhets)? take her to a restaurant? bribe the bouncer and get her in a bar at some Intourist hotel? No? I didn't think so. What am I even talking about. .. you've never been to a restaurant, you'll never own a car. " "Listen, " he would continue, "the problem with this regime is not that they lock up the occasional dissident, the problem is the complete, total lack of quality. is fucking country is built on crap and manufactures crap. In huge quantities. What? the Hermitage? Who fucking needs the Hermitage when the best they can do is steal a Fiat design and even then fuck it up and produce some piece of Zhiguli junk? Stop listening to the BBC, learn to be a man. " Easier said than done. My one foray onto the "Galyora"-the second-oor gallery at the shopping center Gostiny Dvor, a place where the illicit trading business was conducted by an array of shady characters-resulted in a loss of y rubles and any further ambition to be a fartsovschik. (I also spent a night at the nearby police station, puzzled by the seeming intimacy of the interactions between the area drunks and prostitutes and their uniformed captors.) By the second semester Arthur and I had settled into a strange sort of friendship with Arthur playing the role of an older and far more experienced comrade who recognized both the potential and the many limitations of his protégé. I continued to listen to the BBC and accept money from my parents. My love life tended toward White Nights-romantic and therefore unglamorous. Arthur continued to regale us with the stories of his entrepreneurial successes and amorous conquests; his commitment to materiality had evolved into an elaborate personal philosophy of consumption. While clearly cherishing our friendship, he nevertheless cultivated a distinct separateness, a strategic compartmentalizing of his social engagements. I never met his parents or any of his numerous girlfriends. at is, until he moved in with Nika.
This article draws on the archival records of the United States Consulate in Riga, Latvia, during... more This article draws on the archival records of the United States Consulate in Riga, Latvia, during the interwar period and other primary sources to reconstruct the rites of passage by African American citizens of the USA traveling to and from the Soviet Union. In the absence of established diplomatic relations between the USA and the USSR (until 1933), the US legation in Riga served as a popular entry point for American tourists and contract workers attracted by the mystique and job opportunities of the first socialist state. The consular records of the US legation in Riga contain a wealth of materials related to some of these travels. In the course of formal interviews with consular officials, US citizens, including the minority of black visitors, revealed remarkable details of their Soviet odysseys. The archival records bring to life a unique story of 'race tourism' by African Americans to the first socialist state and thus provide a rare insight into the early Soviet society and its accepted attitudes toward racial difference; and such accounts are usually juxtaposed with an eviscerating critique of North American and Western racism during the interwar period.
As this article is being revised for final submission to the editor a small cohort of human right... more As this article is being revised for final submission to the editor a small cohort of human rights organizations in Russia are preparing to stage a ―March Against Hatred‖ in St. Petersburg. 2 The event organizers hope to attract public attention to the scourge of racial bigotry and xenophobia afflicting post-Soviet Russia, an epidemic of hatred that has left in its wake dozens of innocent victims – from African students, subjected to physical assaults and harassment in the streets of Russian cities, to Russia's own ethnic minorities, openly abused and publicly humiliated, to murdered human rights activists and scholars. A recent study conducted among Africans residing in Moscow has revealed the staggering dimensions of the problem: almost sixty percent of those polled had experienced racially-motivated violence. 3 Neither the Russian government nor the general public seem to be prepared to so much as acknowledge this unfolding crisis of race relations in a country that in a not-so-distant past used to stake its international reputation on a vociferous campaign against racism. It is reasonable to expect that the march in St. Petersburg, planned by such groups as the African Union of Russia and a veteran human rights organization Memorial, will attract scant media attention inside Russia. If previous protests of this kind are any indication the turnout for the march will be pitifully low and its participants and their message are likely to be met with indifference, if not mockery, from the passers-by. After decades of antiracist and anti-imperialist propaganda during the Soviet rule, post-socialist Russia and its citizens exhibit little taste for internationalist and egalitarian causes. The purpose of this article is to contextualize the rise of racial intolerance in post-Soviet Russia by examining some of its historical and cultural roots. I argue that the ideas of race and racial difference entertained by many modern-day Russians were formed to a large extent through their encounters with and official and popular representations of Africans residing in the Soviet Union, most of them young men who, from 1957 onwards, traveled to the USSR to pursue affordable higher education. Their presence amidst the Soviet society and their interaction with both the Soviet system and Soviet citizens would make a profound impact on the common perceptions of racial difference still resonating across the former Soviet spaces. The Khrushchevian " thaw " and the 1957 Youth Festival Following Nikita Khrushchev's ascent to power in the post-Stalin Soviet Union, at first just a few and eventually hundreds and even thousands of young Africans began to take advantage of generous educational scholarships extended to them by the Soviet government. The arrangement, much trumpeted by Soviet media and its foreign mouthpieces, was essentially a
African presence in Russia predated the Bolshevik takeover in 1917. Th e arrival of the new Commu... more African presence in Russia predated the Bolshevik takeover in 1917. Th e arrival of the new Communist rule with its attendant vociferous anti-racist and anti-colonial propaganda campaigns enhanced the earlier perceptions of Russia as a society relatively free of racial bias, a place of multiethnic coexistence. As a result dozens of black, mostly Afro-Caribbean and African-American, travellers fl ocked to the " Red Mecca " during the fi rst two decades of its existence. Some of those arrivals were driven by the ideology; however, the majority of them were simply searching for a place of racial equality, free of Western racism. To an extent their euphoric expectations would be realized as the black visitors to Soviet Russia were usually accorded a warm welcome and granted the opportunities for professional and personal fulfi llment that were manifestly absent in their countries of origin. Th e second wave of black migration to the Soviet Union was quantitatively and qualitatively diff erent from the early prewar arrivals. It also took place in the context of the new geopolitical reality of the Cold War. After the 1957 Youth Festival in Moscow, the Soviet Union under Khrushchev opened its doors to hundreds, and eventually to thousands, of students from the Th ird World, many of them from Africa. By extending generous educational scholarships to young Africans, the Soviet Union sought to reaffi rm its international-ist credentials and also curry favor with the newly independent African states. Th e members of this new diasporic community hailed predominantly from the African continent. If the Soviets had hoped for a major propaganda coup, their hopes were not entirely realised. As a propaganda weapon African students tended to jam and even to backfi re. Instead of becoming the symbols of Soviet internationalist eff ort, they came to symbolise Westernization and " foreign infl uences. " Keywords African Americans and students from Africa in the Soviet Union, Cold War, Lumumba University, Soviet popular culture, xenophobia in Russia, Comintern
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