In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

200 Chapter 12 The Cold War, Solidarity Building, and the Recruitment of New Sojourners  Before our eyes, Africa was gaining freedom. We could never have guessed [that the] next year, in 1960, on the initiative of the Soviet Union at the United Nations, more than 30 African colonies would be granted their independence and the year would be declared “The Year of Africa.” . . . The general enthusiasm knew no bounds when legendary figures like Dr. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, appeared in our midst.1 —Lily Golden, 2002 It was the fall of 1958. Robeson had returned to Moscow in August, and Du Bois followed shortly thereafter. In October , both would meet a grown Lily Golden in Tashkent at the Asian and African Writers conference. It was the first time in over ten years that Lily had seen the city of her birth, her “beloved Tashkent.” Happy to have the excuse to return, she was also under assignment from Professor Ivan Potekhin. “Potekhin proposed that I should go . . . as a delegate to the first Conference of Asian and African Writers. He said that he expected Paul Robeson and Dr. Du Bois, ‘your friends,’ to attend. ‘Try to talk to them about opening . . . an Institute of African Studies in Moscow. I hope their authority will help us.’”2 Potekhin had good reason to hope that Du Bois and Robeson’s reappearance in the Soviet Union could push this agenda. For one, they were Pan-Africanists, and, for another, they were good friends of the Soviet government and, with their high-level intercession, the government was sure to act. Potekhin, like Lily, was resurfacing from the cataclysmic revelations of Stalinist atrocities at the Twentieth Communist Party Congress in 1956. Lily noted there was a general “sense of renewal” and people were enjoying “a slight thaw in the ice of rigid conformity.”3 Some of the Cold War tensions were relaxing , and she began to notice that more and more Africans were making their appearance in the Soviet Union. Some of the earliest visitors of the era—two Sudanese and one Libyan—arrived in 1957. These were the first Africans Lily met. Little did she realize that this small delegation would lead to other contacts Cold War, Solidarity Building, Recruitment 201 and even to meeting men whom she and many other Afro-Russian daughters of her generation would marry. A year later, Lily was nominated to the committee hosting African delegates for the World Festival of Youth. “During my last year in Moscow State, there was a major historic event. Khrushchev decided to open a window to the outside world, and so we had the ‘World Festival ofYouth.’ . . . I was nominated to be responsible for all the delegates from African countries. . . . There were several thousand Africans with thousands of problems. . . . We had to do everything , including taking care of the plane tickets, finding books on Russian art . . . organizing meetings between Black Americans and Africans.” Indeed, the Russians, although they opened their doors to these delegates, actually knew little about them. Lily remembered people asking her, “What do they eat? How do they dress and behave?” But, throughout the city, the general response to the many international visitors was a combination of wonder and enthusiasm. “Many Soviet people were in cultural shock at meeting Africans. The majority of Muscovites, and especially those who had come from the distant provinces for the festival, had never seen Africans before. Some had never seen foreigners, because of the ‘Iron Curtain.’” At the same time, the visitors were thrilled to be so warmly received. “The guests from Africa had never encountered such success . They told me that no other country had ever offered them such admiration and attention.”4 The festival itself was quite a coup for Khrushchev. These international gatherings, which drew the world’s future leaders together, had been taking place in various countries every two years since 1947. The 1957 festival in the Soviet Union not only signaled the Soviet support of the festival’s goals of fighting fascism and solidifying peace but also had the largest attendance ever, with thirty-four thousand people representing 131 countries.5 A significant number of the assembled youth came from the Soviet Union, but the fact that 130 other countries sent delegates spoke to a strong commitment to the festival goals and to curiosity about the Soviet experiment. Importantly, as Lily noted, Khrushchev was not only opening the door to these latter-day sojourners but also permitting increased contact...

Share