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Introduction
- Rutgers University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1 Introduction How could a country that turned a brutal and despotic face to its own people offer a hopeful visage to blacks suffering from generations of oppression and Jim Crow? How could a country whose Stalinist leadership eliminated thousands of people from all walks of life, stifling human potential and intellectual creativity, shelter and encourage growth among blacks who journeyed to its shores? Much has been written about Joseph Stalin’s purges and draconic measures to compel his nation’s growth and development. Little known are the special international race relations in the 1920s and 1930s that brought Soviets and blacks together. Frustrated with the limitations of a racist United States and escaping from their own arenas of terror, a number of blacks went to Russia in search of the Soviet promise of a better society. These sojourners were intellectuals , writers, and outstanding figures in the arts and entertainment; they were also farmers and engineers and people with other technical skills. In the Soviet Union, they discovered a country that welcomed them and their talents when the United States did not. And, having taken this bold chance to reshape their destinies, they ultimately not only found personal fulfillment but also played important roles in moving a backward Soviet society forward. The Soviets also had their own ambitions in this enterprise. The political leadership intended to train fresh cadres in the struggle against colonialism and imperial domination. The fact that these recruits were blacks from the United States, who were considered more advanced in their revolutionary sympathies than those from colonial countries, added a special twist. Not only were these people whose discontents might be channeled into productive action in helping organize other disaffected blacks and workers in the United States, but they might help the Soviets reach other populations of color elsewhere. No less important , from the ordinary Russians came the desire to welcome people who had arisen from a seemingly endemic backwardness and thrown off their shackles and who were looking to help the Russians build their new society. 2 Blacks, Reds, and Russians The 1930s brought additional challenges to the Soviets’ intensions to develop their country. The nation was now increasingly confronted with the contradictory pressures of meeting the objectives of Stalin’s ambitious five-year plans, while being seriously hampered by the effects of the purges of the country ’s own scientific and technical specialists. This dearth of expertise and technical know-how forced the Soviets to look outside their borders. Thus arose the campaigns to attract foreign specialists to replace the indigenous ones who had been eliminated. During this period blacks in the United States with technical and professional skills and sympathies for the Soviet experiment were actively recruited along with the thousands of whites who were also attracted to these opportunities. The Soviets also discovered an additional advantage: the black specialists could serve as bridges between the country’s non-Russian people of color and the plans of a modernizing Soviet state. Ultimately, the majority of the black sojourners of the 1920s and 1930s returned to the United States shortly after their study or contract periods. The final push was in 1937, when the Stalinist government began to pressure those still in the country to take up Soviet citizenship. But a smaller group decided to remain, as the prospects of life under the Soviet experiment seemed far brighter than the certainty of returning to the Great Depression and a life under the crippling Jim Crow in the United States. Claude McKay and Otto Huiswood were the first to go, in the 1920s, leading a black-Soviet story that lasted over seventy-five years. Stretching beyond the 1920s through the 1930s, the Stalinist purges, and War World II, these early relationships helped shape the racial dynamics of the Cold War era. W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1926 experience was equally profound. It amazed him to compare the legacy of slavery, which he so eloquently labeled “the veil,” in the United States of the 1920s and 1930s with his observations of the former serfs of Russia who were actively engaged in reshaping their society. Du Bois’s support of the Soviet experiment remained intact as he found ways to make decennial trips up to his last days, in the 1960s. Like other blacks of the 1920s, these men had celebrated the victory of the Allied Powers in World War I, hoping that it would lead to improved race relations in the United States. Yet, despite...