Teddy had few “official” meetings in the USSR. A factory here. A collective farm there. Maybe a school or two. And there was one question Teddy’s hosts always asked: “Why are you still lynching Blacks?” American racism was a global issue during the Cold War. And pointing to it was a strike at America’s Achilles heel. Soviet media devoted a lot of time to the Civil Rights Movement. And Teddy arrived in the USSR just when Martin Luther King was assassinated. So, just what was this Soviet concern for American Blacks? Was it merely a whataboutism, a way to deflect American criticism of Soviet life? Or was there something more to it?
Episode Resources
Flames of Negro Revolution
L. Velichanskii, "The Flames of Negro Revolution," Ogonek No. 21, 1963. English translation.
The Sniper Rifle
Chingiz Aitmatov, "The Sniper Rifle," Izvestiia 9 April 1968. English translation.
James Baldwin's Revelation
James Baldwin interviewed in Izvestiia 28 July 1972. English Translation of "James Baldwin's Revelation."
Sources
Laura Belmonte, Selling the American Way: US Propaganda and the Cold War, UPenn Press, 2010.
Rossen Djagalov, “Racism, the Highest Stage of Anti-Communism,” Slavic Review, Volume 80: 2, 2021, 290 – 298.
Dina Fainberg, Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Frontlines, John Hopkins University Press, 2021.
Meredith Roman, Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of U.S. Racism, 1928-1937, University of Nebraska Press, 2012.
Credits
Voice over by Eve Barden.
Music is by Blue Dot Sessions and Eliot Holmes.