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49 Chapter 4 W.E.B. Du Bois and the Soviet Experiment  [I stood] in astonishment and wonder at the revelation of Russia.1 —W.E.B. Du Bois (1926) “In pregnant language reminiscent of a Protestant Reformation divine,” David Levering Lewis recounted, “Du Bois told of standing ‘in astonishment and wonder at the revelation of Russia’ that had come to him. He might be ‘partially deceived and half-informed,’ but if what he had seen and heard with his eyes and ears in Russia was Bolshevism, [Du Bois wrote] ‘I am a Bolshevik.’”2 In 1928, two years later, Du Bois reminisced , “I have seen a bit of Russia; just a two month’s glimpse of this tremendous land. But what I saw convinced me of certain things: that Russia is earnest.” Putting the world on notice, he continued, “[whether] the present Russian Government succeeds or not, the thing that it is trying to do must and will be done sometime if the world continues to progress.”3 In the 1950s, thirty years later, a prescient and still supportive Du Bois wrote, “Without the looming power of the Soviet Union, China would still be under the paws of Britain, France and America. Only the support of the Soviet Union gave Egypt and the Near East, the courage to stand up and defy Western imperialism. And if in the near future, freedom and independence come to Egypt, Tunis, Algeria , Morocco, and British West Africa, it will be principally because one of the greatest nations on earth, having accomplished socialism today, exists and prospers.”4 Du Bois’s initial 1926 sojourn was a revelation. He had never felt more “comfortable and inconspicuous.”5 He was no longer Ralph Ellison’s “invisible man” but found himself welcomed as any other human being, despite being a Negro and a minority.6 In the Soviet Union, he felt he was a part of humanity rather than separate from it, and repeated examples of this new egalitarianism were exhilarating. In contrast to the perceptions of those who stayed a block of years or who went frequently, Du Bois’s view of the Soviet Union was punctuated by his decennial sojourns. Thus, he saw a country shaped by enormous fluctuations in its evolution. His visits placed him in the Soviet Union at the height of Lenin’s 50 Blacks, Reds, and Russians NEP prosperity in 1926;7 in the early stages of the Stalinist purges and prewar climate of 1936; in a country still recuperating from the devastation of World War II in 1949; and at a time of relative ease under Khrushchev’s “peaceful coexistence ” policy in 1958 and 1959. Each time, despite having to adjust to new realities, Du Bois continued to find much to admire. As he commented after his 1949 visit, “I spent ten days in Moscow and sensed the substance and reality of what we call the Soviet Republics beginning to take definite form. I do not yet know this land in any scientific sense of the word. But in the three visits in 23 years I have a sort of spectroscopic roundness of conception and sense of time which replaced figures.”8 Prior to his first trip in 1926, Du Bois had heard from progressives, both white and black, that the Soviet experiment was worth studying. Such figures as Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, Lincoln Steffens, and Max Eastman were calling attention to it. Briggs and McKay had made visits there and were encouraging others to do so as well. Du Bois read the accounts in the Crusader, the Masses, and the Liberator and had accepted McKay’s proposal to submit pieces for the Crisis.9 Also, as would happen to Robeson in England, Du Bois came across African delegates at the Pan-African congresses there, who also pointed to the developments in the new Soviet Russia.10 Initially skeptical, he found it hard to believe that a program that had come about through a violent revolution could bring positive change for blacks. He published a series of cautionary pieces in the Crisis in the early 1920s: “Negro and Radical Thought” (July 1921), “The Spread of Socialism” (September 1921), and “Socialism and the Negro” (October 1921.)11 He also questioned the Soviets’ ability to move beyond their racial animosities. “Russia is incredibly vast, and the happenings there in the last five years had been intricate to a degree that must make any student pause. . . . [But] how far can the colored...

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