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157 Chapter 10 The Expatriates The Purges, the War Years, and Beyond  The harshness of the regime, of course, could not be overlooked; but this did not affect me or other Negroes directly.1 —Homer Smith (1964) When Homer Smith downplayed his and other blacks’ brushes with the Soviet secret police by stating that it “did not affect ” them, he was basically right. Only one of this small remaining group of black sojourners, Lovett Fort-Whiteman, was known to have been purged. If, however, Smith wanted to indicate that they had only minor encounters or were minimally aware of what was happening to others, then he is seriously misleading . Many of them were challenged by experiences that were traumatizing. As Smith himself had observed, “My boss . . . was liquidated along with several other postal officials. . . . Many disappeared without a trace. . . . Employees had begun talking in whispers.”2 And, Robert Robinson had speculated, “‘How really secure am I?.’ . . . Russians and foreigners at the factory—including my shop—were disappearing.”3 Smith’s first, direct encounter occurred when he went to meet a potential news source: I had noticed two husky men in black overcoats and black fur caps pacing back and forth across the square. . . . Instead of by-passing us as they had been doing previously, they met us head-on. Tapping me on the shoulder, they said, “Come along with us. . . .” The linings of my overcoat, jacket and fur cap were ripped open. . . . The soles and heels and inner soles of my boots were then thoroughly examined. . . . [I] was carefully frisked. . . . When I went next day to a tailor, the old man seemed quite unconcerned over the condition of my clothes. . . . “It looks as if you have fallen into the hands of the Black Ravens.” . . . Russians . . . referred to their Secret Police Agents as Black Ravens. . . . Though nothing had really come of my brush with the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs], it was for me . . . the end of the beginning.4 Smith was taken aback by the tailor’s reaction, but even he had to admit that all was not so simple. He too found he was willing to accommodate 158 Blacks, Reds, and Russians these difficulties in light of his larger ambitions to be a foreign correspondent. “I had begun to question the intelligence of remaining. . . . My disappointment had grown with the passing years. [But] this did not directly affect me. . . . As always, I traded in well stocked shops where only valuta (foreign money) was accepted. These shops were out of bounds for the Russian citizen. . . . I, as a foreign newsman, fared well enough.”5 Ten of the black sojourners, including Smith and Robinson, were still in the Soviet Union after the end of the 1930s: Lovett Fort-Whiteman and Robert Ross of the fellow travelers; Oliver Golden and George Tynes of the agricultural specialists; Lloyd Patterson and Wayland Rudd of the Black and White film group, and Frank Goode.6 Golden’s Jewish American wife, Bertha Bialek Golden, also remained. An eleventh black sojourner, Williana Burroughs, who had visited the country several times since the late 1920s and then moved to the Soviet Union in 1937, stayed through the war, but she was not an expatriate and left in 1945. Neither Smith nor Fort-Whiteman took up Soviet citizenship either.7 Smith’s and Robinson’s memoirs, together with books by Lily Golden and Yelena Khanga, provide insights into the challenges and compromises many in the black sojourner group faced. By the latter part of the 1930s, communication with families and friends in the United States had fallen off considerably, and the blacks remaining in the Soviet Union were thrown more and more on their own resources. Wrote Khanga, “From 1931 until 1936, letters from America got through with some regularity. After that [1937 onwards], nothing arrived until the thaw after Stalin’s death.”8 Communication had moved regularly back and forth between the United States and the Soviet Union, either carried by frequent visitors or mailed. But, with the hardening of the Stalinist regime and growing war tensions, these lines were cut, and the disruption continued for decades . Added Khanga, “[When] Bertha . . . received a letter from Viola, Oliver’s youngest sister, [in 1988] . . . it was the first communication from the Chicago Goldens in more than twenty years.”9 The only exception was during World War II, when Bertha occasionally received food packages from the United States.10 During the initial period, when the sojourners’ skills were helping to build...

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