Black Americans and the Soviet Union
By: Tarik Ata
Tags: African American, History, Communism, Soviet Union, American History

Black Americans and the Soviet Union

Paul Robenson in the USSR. Credits: https://blogs.shu.edu/history/2015/11/08/maxim-matusevich-on-paul-robesons-tragic-love-of-russia/

When we think of the Soviet Union (USSR) we often think of Stalin’s purges, gulags, and big bad communists. However, when people think of the United States ideas of “the American Dream” and the “defenders of freedom” arise. We rarely ever think of the USSR as something positive and in defence of the oppressed, fighting injustices such as racism.

However, the United States (U.S.), as we know, has had a long history of racist government laws and policies which favoured white Americans over all others and whose segregationist methods with Jim Crow and other race laws even inspired the likes of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in their persecution of the Jews and other minorities in Europe.

These race laws of the U.S. led many oppressed citizens to seek out a new world, a safe haven, a place to be accepted, and many found refuge and an ally with the Soviet Union. The USSR was, in fact, ahead of the curve on anti-racist policies and many black Americans who visited subsequently moved there as a result of it. They saw the Soviets as a friend in their fight for freedom, despite the Red Scare propaganda that millions of Americans were forced to consume.

W. E. B. Du Bois (right) with two unidentified men around a dining table at a social gathering in the Soviet Union, probably Moscow, in 1958. Credits: https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-i0618

Various famous black artists, political activists, and thinkers, who travelled to the Soviet Union described a world of racial egalitarianism. Figures such as the notorious political activist, sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist, W. E. B. Du Bois described his tour of the Soviet Union in 1926 as being captivated by the racial equality and human warmth, even stating that:

“If what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my ears is Bolshevism, then I am a Bolshevik.”

Another individual who saw the Soviet Union as a friend of the oppressed and an ally in the fight against racial oppression was Paul Robeson, the famous artist and political activist. Robenson was a staunch defender of the Soviet Union, fighting for its legitimacy even in the face of McCarthyism and the removal of his passport and right to travel, he proceeded to ally himself with the USSR as a source of hope for the downtrodden of the world, declaring:

“T he Soviet Union’s very existence, its example before the world of abolishing all discrimination based on color or nationality, its fight in every arena of world conflict for genuine democracy and for peace, this has given us Negroes the chance of achieving our complete liberation within our own time, within this generation.”

Robenson did not move to the Soviet Union because, and I quote:

“my father was a slave and my people died to build [the United States and], I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you and no fascist-minded people will drive me from it!”

Still, Robenson’s love for the Soviet Union was clear, as he stated that it was a source of inspiration and hope to the oppressed around the globe, particularly black Americans.

Langston Hughes (left) in south-central Asia. Credits: Yale University Library

Another black American who was mesmerised by the Soviet Union was poet and political activist, Langston Hughes, who in 1932 described his visit, along with many other black actors for the filming of an anti-racist film (Black and White), to the Soviet Union as life-changing. In his memoirs Langston described his journey and arrival to the USSR:

“In Helsinki, we stayed overnight and the next day we took a train headed for the land . . . where race prejudice was reported taboo, the land of the Soviets. . . . When the train stopped for passports to be checked, a few of the young black men and women left the train to touch their hands to Soviet soil, lift the new earth in their palms and kiss it.”

Langston was a founding member of the Harlem branch of the “Friends of the Soviet Union” and had a long love and admiration for the USSR from his learning of the Bolshevik Revolution and of the newly formed Soviet Union. Langston was, in fact, so fond of the USSR that he travelled to south-central Asia, comparatively seeking out similarities between this region and the American South. His book A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia (1934) he details the similarity between both, the American South and south-central Asia, as being in the production of cotton and broadens his perspective on world affairs.

Labourers also sought work in the Soviet Union during the Great Depression, one of which was Jamaican born, Black American Robert Nathaniel Robinson, a toolmaker from Detroit who went to work in the USSR’s booming industries in the 1930s. Robinson recounts why he accepted the job in the Soviet Union, citing the racism he received from his white coworkers, the prospect of earning a better wage, and the Great Depression, as the reasons for leaving the United States.

On his arrival in Stalingrad, he was subjected to a racist assault by two white Americans, also in the USSR for employment purposes, and the Soviet press made Robinson into a celebrity, a fighter of racial injustice. It also vilified the two Americans for their attack, denouncing their actions and proclaiming the Soviet Union is a place of “solidarity of workers of all nations and races”.

Robinson, with his proportional levels of fame, continued to generate storms in late 1934 to early 1935 as he was elected to a post on the Moscow Soviet (city council). Resulting in Washington dubbing him a communist subversive and causing problems with his citizenship, eventually forcing him to relinquish it. Robinson soon turned into the face of racial egalitarianism and became somewhat of a Soviet hero, championing the USSR as a progressive and equal society.

W. E. B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois viewing the May Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square, May 1, 1959. Credits: Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

The Soviet Union taking the moral high ground over the United States proved to be extremely damaging to Washington as it gave the USSR legitimacy and left the American government in a difficult position during a tumultuous period — the strength of communism in the U.S. in the 1930s and the economic hardships of the Great Depression — as many Americans started to view the Soviet Union as a beacon of potential hope. This majorly challenged the widely held belief that America was a leader in the fight against oppression and tyrannical rule.

According to the historian Barbara Keys, the anti-racist government policies introduced by the Soviets gave the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations in the 1950s and 60s the rationale to support civil rights initiatives. Indicating the vital role that anti-racist laws issued by the Soviet Union had in introducing racial justice in the United States.