Suchergebnisse

Soviet-African relations to 1960: historical context and evolution of ideology -- Crying wolf: early Nigerian reactions to the Soviet Union, 1960-66 -- The test of Biafra, 1966-1970 -- The sky is the limit?: devaluation of a political relationship, 1970-1985 -- Justifcation by steel alone: the impact of Ajaokuta construction -- The Nigerian "perestroika debate" -- Conclusion.

AbstractIn the early 1970s, the plight of a charismatic Black American communist and philosophy professor Angela Davis, put on trial in the United States for her alleged involvement in a courtroom shootout in California, galvanized international public opinion. A massive publicity campaign in support of Angela Davis resonated across the globe and drew in millions of volunteers and sympathizers. The nations of the communist bloc, led by the Soviet Union, were particularly active in rallying their citizens in defense of a jailed American radical. In 1970–1972, Davis became a household name throughout the Soviet Union (but also in East Germany, Cuba, Poland, and other socialist nations). The "Free Angela Davis" campaign was unprecedented in scope and left a lasting mark on the collective memory of the citizens of the Soviet Union and its socialist satellites. Such was the impact of this propaganda juggernaut that decades later the image of Angela Davis remained current as a pop-cultural phenomenon across the former Soviet spaces and a symbol of unrealized and often conflicting aspirations towards freedom.

This article draws on the archival records of the United States Consulate in Riga, Latvia, during the interwar period and other primary sources to reconstruct the rites of passage by African American citizens of the USA traveling to and from the Soviet Union. In the absence of established diplomatic relations between the USA and the USSR (until 1933), the US legation in Riga served as a popular entry point for American tourists and contract workers attracted by the mystique and job opportunities of the first socialist state. The consular records of the US legation in Riga contain a wealth of materials related to some of these travels. In the course of formal interviews with consular officials, US citizens, including the minority of black visitors, revealed remarkable details of their Soviet odysseys. The archival records bring to life a unique story of 'race tourism' by African Americans to the first socialist state and thus provide a rare insight into the early Soviet society and its accepted attitudes toward racial difference; and such accounts are usually juxtaposed with an eviscerating critique of North American and Western racism during the interwar period.

This article by Maxim Matusevich proposes to develop the model of modernity presented by Paul Gilroy in his seminal essay The Black Atlantic , to better understand the modernizing impact of African students in the Soviet Union on their host society. While it is true that the Soviet Union, just as its Russian predecessor, possessed no African colonies and, in fact, remained unrelenting in its critique of European colonialism and North American racism, it experienced its own modernizing encounter with the Black At­lantic. In the aftermath of the 1957 Youth Festival in Moscow, first dozens, and eventually thousands of African students made their appearance in the USSR. They arrived in Moscow, Leningrad, Baku, Kiev, Minsk, and other Soviet cities attracted by generous educational scholarships but also inspired by their own postcolonial dreams of reforming and rebuilding their newly independent nations. For the Soviets, steeped in anticolonial rhetoric and guided by Cold War exigencies, these young Africans seemed to be "natural allies" who could help to enhance Moscow's credentials in the Third World and cultivate its future elites. However, the reality of the encounter between these postcolonial nomads and a largely isolationist society produced some unintended consequences. From the point of view of Soviet authorities, the community of African students in the Soviet Union continued to be a source of ambivalence and even, on occasion, political and cultural subversion. Cosmopolitan and globally minded African students repeatedly challenged the norms of Soviet political and cultural discourse and, in doing so, proved to be the true harbingers of modernity and globalization for the hosts. In the course of the encounter with Soviet society, they inadvertently expanded the reach of the Black Atlantic, bringing its tidal waves well beyond the Iron Curtain.
Статья представляет собой оригинальную попытку применить модель модерности, предложенную Полем Гилроем в его знаменитом эссе "Черная Атлантика", для понимания модернизационного воздействия африканских студентов в СССР. Автор рассматривает период после московского фестиваля молодежи и студентов 1957 г., когда в СССР стали прибывать десятки, а позднее и тысячи африканских студентов. Их привлекали не только щедрые стипендии; они вдохновлялись постколониальной мечтой реформирования своих ставших независимыми наций. Советы рассматривали их как естественных союзников и агентов укрепления позиций Москвы в третьем мире. Однако в реальности контакты между этими постколониальными номадами и изоляционистским советским обществом привели к ряду неожиданных последствий, анализ которых и составляет главный предмет рассмотрения в статье. Космополитичные и глобально мыслящие африканские студенты бросали вызов советскому политическому порядку и культурному дискурсу и, как показывает автор, оказывались провозвестниками иного типа модерности и глобализации в принимающем обществе. Взаимодействуя с советским обществом, они непреднамеренно расширяли и пределы Черной Атлантики за рамки железного занавеса.

The Leninist argument, that the class struggle of the European proletariat was intertwined with the liberation of the `toiling masses of the East', led to an official ideology of Soviet internationalism in which Africans occupied a special place. Depictions of the evils of racism in the US became a staple of Soviet popular culture and a number of black radicals, among them Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson and Claude McKay, flocked to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-30s, inspired by the belief that a society free of racism had been created. While there was some truth to this view, people of African descent in the Soviet Union nevertheless experienced a condescending paternalism, reflected also in their cinematic portrayal and in popular literature and folklore. With the onset of the cold war, young Africans were encouraged to study in Russia, where they received a mixed reaction and, on account of occasional conflict with the authorities and Soviet cultural norms, became symbols of dissent against official Soviet culture. Later, in the perestroika period, Africa became a scapegoat for popular discontent amidst a worsening climate of racism.