Kadyrov cursed Stalin/ 45% Muscovites believe Stalin´s actions were justified

please help me understand "russki mir" , does it mean that A third of "Russians" don´t respect for Kadyrov? and how Muscovites can love Stalin and Kadyrov in the same time?

https://translate.google.com/transl...ru/news/2016/02/23/stalin/&edit-text=&act=url

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-respect-Stalin-is-growing-poll-suggests.html

 

Why does it surprise you that lots of Russians do not like Kadyrov? I think this is normal. It maybe even more than one third, since there are of course those who does not like neither Stalin, nor Kadyrov.

 

Look at it this way, only 2% admire Stalin in Russia, and I'm sure it's a lot less than the ones who admire Hitler in Lithuania and Ukraine.

A bit of advice Litwin, you have to stop reading British tabloids like the Telegraph and the BBC. Because when you find out what's really going on in the world, it might be too late.

 

девушка с котёнком

The Panama Papers reveal that cis het Russian oligarchs use extra capital from tax avoidance to buy kittens for their mistresses.

 

We went over this. Without Stalin modernising Russia, Germany would have succeeded in invading them and the Germany would have likely won. Russia was fighting 80% of the whole German force. The west struggled against a measly 20%.

 

zhanna, what are you talking about?

your guys? they hate Ukrainians, Belorusians, Balts, Poles, too , want occupy

[video=youtube;LIuHocU6h7k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIuHocU6h7k#t=35[/video]

 

Georgian bandit Koba has nothing to do with modernizing, industrialization. he provided only the slaves to Americans who gave to ulus juchi all its industries...

http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=450830&p=1066039781#post1066039781


ps

[video=youtube;Un5LpUl9quw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un5LpUl9quw[/video]

 

what do you think about the main Putin´s support group - vatnik, look like they are in-love with Chechen men? at least 31% Muscovites respects the Chechen bandit

[video=youtube;-U_ZLnYopZA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_ZLnYopZA[/video]
http://cs315425.vk.me/v315425324/1d5f/lQ7F07xHLgc.jpg
https://pp.vk.me/c320717/v320717249/c04/LUBZ5s6bkC0.jpg
http://img0.joyreactor.cc/pics/post/роисс я-чечня-кадыр ов-ватни к-541626.jpeg

 

This is lie. Americans has nothing to do with industrialization in Soviet Union.

 

have you seen names of industrial facilities build by Americans , numbers, statistic? my bad i´d write Americans and Germans ...
ps
have you seen it?
http://www.politicalforum.com/lates...an-saudi-arabia-muscovy-running-out-time.html

 

Respect? Or maybe afraid of him? I am personally in 69%.

 

I have seen your thread about industrialization with the name of factories etc , Litwin. But I do not believe in this material. For me it looks like a fiction. The other thread I have not seen yet.

 

this form of respect... they afraid unconsciously that Caucasus will take over a weak ulus, which can take place in 2-5 years

[video=youtube;_N-BLseJ-bo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N-BLseJ-bo[/video]

 

That is truly disturbing. There is something sickening going on in Russia right now and almost half of its people are infected.

Can you imagine reading a poll where a third of Germans feel respect for Adolph Hitler and 45 per cent believe his repressions were at least “to some extent” justified?

 

I had the odd experience of living in Moscow in the early 1990s.

A number of things were quite revealing to me at the time, but one of the most striking were the parades, hundreds and sometimes thousands in attendance, of people marching with pictures of Stalin wanting to bring back his 'good old days' since the turbulent changes from the dissolution of the Soviet Union were so painful to so many.

 

Russia had just been through a huge civil war

· The Russian economy was in shambles

· The job was to now unify the whole country mainly made up of peasants

· Fewer than 20 out of every 100 people lived in the cities

· The peasants had no industrial equipment

· The Kulaks were rich farmers who were brutally abused



Left and Right



· The peasants could not get farm equipment at a reasonable cost, so they would not sell their food to the cities

· Stalin did not agree with Trotsky’s ideas of development, and pushed him into exile. Trotsky would later be assassinated in Mexico by “unknown” sources

· Stalin began his policy of “Socialism in one country”

· This meant get Russia out of her problems before worrying about Communist revolution in the rest of the world. Stalin now had to convince the peasants

· Stalin created his Five Year Plan - The first one in 1928-33
· This was a list of targets for industries, power supplies and transportation

· Plans would now have the force of government orders

· Collectivization: made all the small farms into huge collectives
· This would increase production, thus making more money

· With the money Russia would buy more industrial products from abroad

· So, less farm workers would be needed, so they could go to the cites and work in the factories

· The plan was very disorganized in the beginning, but did gain some positive industrial results.

· More peasants suffered as the food was taken to feed the cities created some famine

· The Kulaks were obliterated by Stalin, beginning the Purge period

· Those described as actively hostile were put into concentration camp, while their families were deported North to Siberia. The wealthy were banished

· The party officials and the police watched over every aspect of Russian life.

· The plans did increase industrial output rapidly

· Stalin’s priorities were industry, not clothing

· 13 million men and women were added to the cities during the first five year plan

· Blame for any failures of quotas were put on the workers, who were called enemies who were trying to sabotage Stalin and the Soviet People.

 

Industrialization was the main component of Stalin’s revolution. All the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution understood the inherent problem in starting a communist revolution in Russia: the country was not sufficiently capitalist to become socialist, and subsequently, communist. The transition from the old Russia to a truly communist state would require industrialization on a massive scale.

According to Marxist theory, only through a modern industrialized economy could a true proletariat class be developed as Marx makes no mention of a peasant class. Marxist theory aside, the need to industrialize was also a pragmatic matter of self-defense. Stalin, either as a result of paranoia or a simple distrust of the capitalist West, assumed his country would have to fight for its survival. He presented the need to industrialize as a life or death struggle. “Do you want our socialist fatherland to be beaten and to lose its independence?” he asked in a famous February, 1931 speech.

“If you do not want this you must put an end to its backwardness in the shortest possible time and develop genuine bolshevik tempo in building up the socialist system of the economy […] We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this difference in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed” (Daniels, 182).

Stalin saw increased centralization as the means to make the industrialization drive successful. “It is time to put an end to the rotten policy of noninterference in production. It is time to adopt a new policy, a policy adopted to the present times--the policy of interfering in everything” (Daniels, 182).

At the outset of the first five year plan in 1929, Stalin instituted impossibly high production figures for factories to stir up zeal. As Kenez points out, the unrealistic optimism of these goals can be seen by the fact that many of goals party leaders choose for industries 1932 were not reached until 1960 (Kenez, 90). Realistic state planning went out the window. According to Kenez, “‘planning’ was reduced to naming target figures which had little more than propaganda significance” (Kenez, 90).

The propaganda, however, was extremely successful in that it accomplished its goal: increased production. In the first five year plan, which ended in 1934, there was a fifty percent increase in industrial output with an average annual growth rate of eighteen percent, while the population of industrial workers doubled. Much of this success can be attributed to the zeal with which the workers approached their work; they were mobilized as if for war, and were willing to accept lower standards of living as sacrifice for building a modern industrial infrastructure and economy.

John Scott, an American who worked building the city and factories at Magnitogorsk in the early thirties, describes the attitude of his coworkers in his book Behind the Urals. One man complains about the lack of food, then reverses course saying “But then – if we are going to build blast furnaces we have to eat less for awhile” (Scott, 13). Shabkov, a kulak, describes how his family’s property was arbitrarily taken and his brother murdered, only to conclude: “But then, after all, look at what we’re doing. In a few years now we’ll be ahead of everybody industrially. We’ll all have automobiles and there won’t be any differentiation between kulaks and anybody else” (Scott, 1. They all seem to share an acceptance of deprivation today in exchange for the utopia of tomorrow.

In many ways they had reason for this optimism: society was fundamentally changing. In particular the industrial workforce was growing, as many peasants moved from the countryside into the cities to escape collectivization. Between 1926 and 1932 the urban population grew from 26 million to 38.7 million. Between 1928 and 1932 the number of employed jumped from 11.5 million to 24 million (Kenez, 93).

Women also joined the workforce in large numbers. During the NEP years less than a quarter of the industrial workers were female, by the end of the 1930’s they made up forty percent of the industrial workforce (Kenez 94).

The increases in production were dramatic. During the first five year plan (1929-1934) there was a fifty percent increase in overall industrial output and an average annual growth rate of eighteen percent. These statistics, however, do not take into account the poor quality of the goods produced. By emphasizing output only, and by intentionally setting the target output levels unrealistically high, the Soviet leaders created a system in which poor quality done quickly was preferable to producing quality products at a slower rate. Part of this had to do with the constant specter of the secret police hovering over the country, ready to declare “treason when economists pointed out the irrationalities in [the] plans or argued that impossible goals were bound to create crises, which in turn led to waste and inefficiency” (Kenez, 90).

There was also the problem created by an entire workforce learning the skills necessary to run the newly built factories and plants all at once. Many of the workers were from the peasantry and lacked any sort of education, and as a result, heavy industry was run inefficiently. Scott describes the inability of the workers to run the machinery they had been so busy building: “Semi-trained workers were unable to operate the complicated machines which had been erected. Equipment was ruined, men were crushed, gassed and poisoned, money was spent in astronomical quantities” (Scott, 137).

The waste and inefficiency that plagued the struggle to make heavy industry work left over few resources for light industry and consumer goods. Shelves in stores were often bare. According to Scott, “the size of the pay envelope, the number of bank notes under the mattress, no longer determined living standards. Everybody had money, but what one ate or wore depended almost exclusively on what there was to buy in a particular store to which one was attached” (Scott, 42).

Kenez emphasizes this point when he writes that “real wages of 1932 were only about half of what they had been in 1928” (Kenez, 95). Living conditions also remained abysmal. As workers poured into the cities a serious housing shortage emerged. Often multiple families were forced to share small rooms (Kenez, 96). Still, despite all its failures, the rabid industrialization did close the gap between the Soviets and the West, and it is doubtful anything short of this kind of mass mobilization would have given Russia the means to withstand the Nazi onslaught a few years later.

The successes the industrialization drive did enjoy were the results of the transformation of the Russian agricultural system and the exploitation of the peasantry. Industrializing Russia required purchasing large amounts of foreign machinery and feeding a growing workforce, both of which required large amounts of grain. In the end, the peasants were forced, oftentimes violently, to subsidize the industrialization of Russia by giving up larger and larger amounts of their grain while gaining nothing in return.

Stalin called this a “supertax” on the peasants, but was convinced it was necessary (Daniels, 171). In a speech to the Central Committee in April of 1929, Stalin insisted that the state must use new measures in order to expedite the process of “obtaining from [the peasants] the maximum grain surplus necessary to be able to dispense with imported grain and save foreign currency for the development of industry” (Daniels, 172).

Obtaining the maximum amount of grain would require a whole new agricultural system. As Peter Kenez notes, grain production at the end of the NEP era, a time in which peasants were encouraged to sell their grain and create markets, was still only ninety percent of what it was in 1913, but more importantly, the amount of grain that made it to the market was only half of what it was before the revolution. (Kenez, 82). The problem was that most of the large estates that produced grain for the market had been destroyed in the Bolshevik takeover, and that the government kept grain prices low. The result was that peasants sold their grain to NEP men and others who offered better prices than the government (Kenez 82-3).

Stalin saw the deficiency in the agricultural system as “small-peasant farming, which provides a minimum amount of grain for the market” (Daniels, 160). The solution, he said, “lies in the transition from the small, backward and scattered peasant farms to amalgamated, large scale socialized farms […] the way out lies […] in expanding and strengthening the old state farms, and in organizing and developing new, large state farms” (Daniels, 161).

The collectivization process began in 1927, at which time the decision to move onto collective farms was voluntary. Few volunteered. In 1928 less than one percent of all arable land was farmed by collectives; by 1929 barely more than seven percent of the peasant households were collectivized (Kenez, 85). After Stalin defeated all political opposition, however, collectivization became mandatory, and increasingly violent. By the spring of 1930, the proportion of collectivized household skyrocketed to sixty percent (Kenez 85).

The process of rapid collectivization was made possible by Stalin’s war on the Kulaks. Like Lenin before him, Stalin saw the kulaks, vaguely defined as wealthy peasants, as unacceptably capitalist. (Paradoxically, the regime was punishing those who were most successful under the NEP system.) By initiating a war on the kulaks, Stalin’s regime succeeded in dividing the peasant class, making them less likely to resist collectivization. The attacks on the Kulaks also helped make the impression that it was only the Kulaks that resisted collectivization, presumably because they were not imbued with enough “class consciousness” and enjoyed exploiting their neighbors. And since kulak was so loosely defined, anyone who resisted collectivization could be quickly labeled a kulak.

As was always the case in Stalin’s Russia, terror was the most convincing means of coercion. Kulaks were sometimes killed, sometimes sent to Siberia, but always had their property taken. Local districts were required to fill quotas of Kulaks to identify (Kenez, 86). Kenez sees the violence of this time as collectivization’s most significant precedent: “Mass murder for vaguely defined political goals became a possibility – this was the most important legacy of collectivization” (Kenez, 89).

Initially, the state endorsed the soukhoz, or state farms. These were owned and operated by the state, with wages paid to the peasants who worked their. Soon, however, the regime favored the kolhoz, or collective farms, in which the peasants lived and farmed together, and had to pay the state a proportion of their harvest, (usually around forty percent) which was more exploitive and therefore preferable since the peasants had to suffer whatever shortages arose, not the state.

The peasants were also forced to pay a tax to the machine tractor stations, or MTS. Agricultural machinery was not given to individual farms, but kept in the MTSs, which were shared by several kolhoz. This furthered centralization, and gave the state even more power over the peasants, who now relied on the state for all aspects of their farming. The kolhozes were forced to hand over a percentage of their crops to the MTS for the use of its equipment, usually around twenty percent. The MTSs also had a political department that reported to a national body (Kenez, 9.

The results of collectivization were not what the regime had hoped. Grain production declined ten percent between 1928 and 1932, and in addition delivery quotas were “two to three times higher than the quantities the peasants had previously marketed” (Kenez, 99). Starvation was rampant and between 1932 and 1933 the Soviet Union suffered a cataclysmic famine. The government did nothing to assist the starving, what little grain was harvested was brought to the cities: in effect the regime traded the peasants for the workers. Admitting to the horrors of the famine which was focused primarily in the Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus, and the Volga region (the Union’s “breadbasket”) would undermine the state’s commitment to collectivization. It is estimated that five to seven million people starved to death (Kenez, 100).

In 1932, Stalin gave his “dizzy with success” speech in which he claimed that collectivization was such a success that it must be reeled in. At that time the largest of the farms were broken up into smaller ones, and the peasants were once again allowed private garden plots, which were more productive then the farms themselves.

Although collectivization was somewhat of a failure in terms of grain production, it was a success in that it had solved the peasant problem that had confounded the Bolsheviks since Lenin. The peasants were no longer autonomous, there will was broken, and the power in Moscow now controlled Russia more completely then the Tsars could have ever dreamed.

The mass mobilization under Stalin had costs millions of lives. Peasants, workers, the intelligentsia, and the party itself, thanks to the purges, all suffered losses that had been previously unequaled in the long and brutal history of Russia. If nothing else, the country was prepared for the sacrifices of World War II. But what may be the greatest casualty of the Stalin era was the dream of communism. Scholars will debate whether Stalin’s massive terror campaigns were the inevitable outcome of communism for many years, but what became clear during this period is that the violence employed by the Bolsheviks in taking power would only intensify. Communism could no longer claim to be an emancipating force, at least not in the eyes of a candid world.

References

 

Some Americans moved to Russia at that time. So they helped out.

 

wrong again ...

- - - Updated - - -

of cos no, Muscovy needs very own Nuremberg, as soon as possible ...

 

Says the person who is wrong all the time. Including now.

Guess you never heard of how thousands of Americans fled to Russia during the great depression.

Russia really struggled with illegal immigration at that time. They only excepted skilled workers. These workers helped to fuel Russian industry.

Were the emigrants stupid to go to Russia expecting to be well-treated?

No. Looking back on it now, of course we know more about the true nature of Stalinism. But you have to remember that in 1931 the whole of western capitalism seemed to collapsing – and that wasn't the left wing point of view, that was the moderate point of view. 25% of the United States was out of a job, and the stock market had crashed so far that it would take 30 years to come back to 1929 levels. You had people queuing up for bread and living in coke ovens.

And then if you read in an American newspaper that in Russia they're opening up factories every day, that the workers are going to given great standards and great wages, that you won't be exploited, you'll work shorter hours, you'll free medicine, free schooling for your children… it would have sounded perfect. And at the same time there were respected Western intellectuals like George Bernard Shaw who were appearing on American radio programmes to say "Russia is the future, other countries will soon follow their model." I could see myself in that position saying, "Well, OK, I'll go for a year or two and find out."

 

Growing up un Soviet Union, Emilia Tynes-Mensah did the same things other children did. She read the classics of literary master Alexander Pushkin, listened to the symphonies of Peter Tchaikovsky and heard the propaganda that life here was better than anywhere else.

But in her home, there was American jazz, Thanksgiving celebrations and stories of the struggles facing blacks in the United States. An improvised version of soul food sometimes replaced borscht.


That's because her father, George Tynes, was an African American agronomist from Virginia who moved to Russia in the 1930s.

Tynes was among hundreds of blacks who traveled to the Soviet Union in the two decades after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Some were hard-core Communists. Others were curious adventurers.


"My father didn't know anything about this country. He didn't know what to expect," said Tynes-Mensah, 73, her mind flying back through the decades as she sat in her Moscow apartment, where black-and-white photos of her parents and children shared space on an antique sideboard with color shots of her grandchildren.

Early African American migrants in Russia
Most of the African Americans who came to Russia in the 1930s were seeking a better life, desperate to flee the social inequality and Depression-era hardships that racked America at the time.
"Everybody who would come to the Soviet Union from America, my father would tell them, 'Please don't forget to bring me some records,' " Tynes-Mensah said. "He loved Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson. But he also loved classical music and opera and ballet."

Most of the African Americans who came to Russia were seeking a better life, desperate to flee the social inequality and Depression-era hardships that racked America at the time, said Allison Blakely, professor emeritus of history at Boston University who has written a book on the African American immigrants.

My father felt the U.S.S.R. treated him better than America. He was happy here.
— Emilia Tynes-Mensah, whose father was among several hundred African Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union to work in the 1930s

"They were looking for a society where they could escape color prejudice and racism," Blakely said.

::

Today, fewer than 50 descendants of these African Americans are believed to still live in Russia. In all, their numbers in the former Soviet republics could be between 100 and 200, according to researchers.

They have become footnotes to African American and Russian history, said Yelena Demikovsky, a New York-based Russian film director and researcher who is making a movie, "Black Russians — The Red Experience," about the immigrants to the Soviet Union and their descendants.

Officials actively recruited skilled foreign laborers and professionals, Blakely said. About 18,000 Americans answered the call to work in the 1930s, he said. Among them were several hundred African Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union, including dozens who lived there for "the good part of a decade," Blakely said.

Their ranks included graduates of historically black colleges such as Tuskegee University in Alabama and Virginia's Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School, later called the Hampton Institute. They were engineers, educators, entertainers, journalists, lawyers. The actor-activist Paul Robeson and poet Langston Hughes were among those travelers captivated by communism.

The Soviets gave the African Americans red-carpet treatment, including fat paychecks, subsidized housing and free vacations.

"My father felt the U.S.S.R. treated him better than America," said Tynes-Mensah, a former university chemistry instructor who was born in the Russian town of Krasnodar and now lives mainly in the United States, spending summers in Russia. "He was happy here."

A graduate of Wilberforce University in Ohio and a former college football star, Tynes could only find work washing dishes in a restaurant back in America, his daughter recalled. So he jumped at the opportunity to go to Russia, although he never joined the Communist Party, his daughter said.

Tynes was among 11 African American agricultural specialists led by Oliver Golden, an agronomist and Communist from Mississippi, who boarded the German ship Deutschland bound for the Soviet Union in 1931.

Oliver Golden's granddaughter, Yelena Khanga, 52, a Moscow-based talk show host, recalled how American Communist leaders and black dignitaries visiting Russia would make the Golden household their first stop.

The conversation usually centered on the plight of African Americans, the poor and the working class. Khanga — a world traveler with fans from her high-profile TV job, a swank flat near Red Square and a driver — said she considered such talk "so strange."

"I would think, 'Why are we discussing the situation of working-class people in Chicago when we'll never be in Chicago?' " she said.

::

The experience of African Americans who traveled to or settled in Russia was overwhelmingly positive, descendants said. In turn, they made valuable contributions to Soviet society, said Blakely, the professor. Agricultural specialists helped devise different uses for materials, such as rope made from hemp. They also helped develop plant species that were cheaper to cultivate. Their contributions provided a boost to the Soviet economy.

Tynes, who was sent to various Soviet republics to teach people how to raise ducks and other waterfowl, became a nationally recognized expert on poultry. Golden helped develop a cotton industry in Uzbekistan. And the African Americans introduced Russians to blues and jazz.

"They had an impact disproportionate to their numbers because they were there precisely because the Soviet leadership was trying to use them as a symbol of what they were trying to build in terms of a truly democratic society," Blakely said. "They were very much in the public eye."

Within years, however, such attention was unwelcome. During the era of Josef Stalin's purges, foreigners were viewed with suspicion and non-Soviet citizens were ordered to leave the country, said Demikovsky, the filmmaker.

Khanga said her grandfather escaped being nabbed by the secret police by a fluke. He was away from home the day they came for him. When Golden dutifully turned himself in, he was informed that the quota of arrests for his area had been fulfilled, Khanga said.

The African Americans were shunned during the Cold War, but it was because they were foreigners, not because they were black, their descendants said. But attitudes toward blacks changed in the1960s with the influx of thousands of students from Africa.

Tynes-Mensah, whose mother was Russian-Ukrainian, said she was keenly aware when she was growing up that she was different.

"I was afraid to go out in public," said the septuagenarian, who has cafe-au-lait skin and a short Afro. "People used to stare. But it was curiosity. They were not angry or aggressive like they are now."


Today, the acceptance of blacks in Russia is far lower compared with what the African American pioneers experienced, said Tynes-Mensah, who runs a nonprofit called Metis that offers support to mixed-race children, the majority of whose fathers came to Russia from Africa.

"Afro-Russians want to feel Russian, but the society doesn't want to recognize them as Russian," she said. "Sometimes [people] will say, 'Go back to Africa.' "

Khanga, a vivacious and charismatic woman who was raised on the gospel songs of Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin, said any obstacles she faced growing up in Russia during the Cold War years were because of her American heritage, not her race.

"I feel comfortable as a black person in Russia," said Khanga, who is married to a white Russian and has a 12-year-old daughter.

Still, in the 1990s she felt compelled to find her roots. She traveled to Africa and the United States, connected with relatives in New York and Mississippi and wrote a book detailing her family's story.

"When I'm in America, I feel that I'm African American because I love going to black churches, I love soul food, I love black music, I love lots of things that unite people of color," Khanga said. "But when I'm in Russia, I feel Russian."

 

Growing up un Soviet Union, Emilia Tynes-Mensah did the same things other children did. She read the classics of literary master Alexander Pushkin, listened to the symphonies of Peter Tchaikovsky and heard the propaganda that life here was better than anywhere else.

But in her home, there was American jazz, Thanksgiving celebrations and stories of the struggles facing blacks in the United States. An improvised version of soul food sometimes replaced borscht.


That's because her father, George Tynes, was an African American agronomist from Virginia who moved to Russia in the 1930s.

Tynes was among hundreds of blacks who traveled to the Soviet Union in the two decades after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Some were hard-core Communists. Others were curious adventurers.


"My father didn't know anything about this country. He didn't know what to expect," said Tynes-Mensah, 73, her mind flying back through the decades as she sat in her Moscow apartment, where black-and-white photos of her parents and children shared space on an antique sideboard with color shots of her grandchildren.

Early African American migrants in Russia
Most of the African Americans who came to Russia in the 1930s were seeking a better life, desperate to flee the social inequality and Depression-era hardships that racked America at the time.
"Everybody who would come to the Soviet Union from America, my father would tell them, 'Please don't forget to bring me some records,' " Tynes-Mensah said. "He loved Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson. But he also loved classical music and opera and ballet."

Most of the African Americans who came to Russia were seeking a better life, desperate to flee the social inequality and Depression-era hardships that racked America at the time, said Allison Blakely, professor emeritus of history at Boston University who has written a book on the African American immigrants.

My father felt the U.S.S.R. treated him better than America. He was happy here.
— Emilia Tynes-Mensah, whose father was among several hundred African Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union to work in the 1930s

"They were looking for a society where they could escape color prejudice and racism," Blakely said.

::

Today, fewer than 50 descendants of these African Americans are believed to still live in Russia. In all, their numbers in the former Soviet republics could be between 100 and 200, according to researchers.

They have become footnotes to African American and Russian history, said Yelena Demikovsky, a New York-based Russian film director and researcher who is making a movie, "Black Russians — The Red Experience," about the immigrants to the Soviet Union and their descendants.

Officials actively recruited skilled foreign laborers and professionals, Blakely said. About 18,000 Americans answered the call to work in the 1930s, he said. Among them were several hundred African Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union, including dozens who lived there for "the good part of a decade," Blakely said.

Their ranks included graduates of historically black colleges such as Tuskegee University in Alabama and Virginia's Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School, later called the Hampton Institute. They were engineers, educators, entertainers, journalists, lawyers. The actor-activist Paul Robeson and poet Langston Hughes were among those travelers captivated by communism.

The Soviets gave the African Americans red-carpet treatment, including fat paychecks, subsidized housing and free vacations.

"My father felt the U.S.S.R. treated him better than America," said Tynes-Mensah, a former university chemistry instructor who was born in the Russian town of Krasnodar and now lives mainly in the United States, spending summers in Russia. "He was happy here."

A graduate of Wilberforce University in Ohio and a former college football star, Tynes could only find work washing dishes in a restaurant back in America, his daughter recalled. So he jumped at the opportunity to go to Russia, although he never joined the Communist Party, his daughter said.

Tynes was among 11 African American agricultural specialists led by Oliver Golden, an agronomist and Communist from Mississippi, who boarded the German ship Deutschland bound for the Soviet Union in 1931.

Oliver Golden's granddaughter, Yelena Khanga, 52, a Moscow-based talk show host, recalled how American Communist leaders and black dignitaries visiting Russia would make the Golden household their first stop.

The conversation usually centered on the plight of African Americans, the poor and the working class. Khanga — a world traveler with fans from her high-profile TV job, a swank flat near Red Square and a driver — said she considered such talk "so strange."

"I would think, 'Why are we discussing the situation of working-class people in Chicago when we'll never be in Chicago?' " she said.

::

The experience of African Americans who traveled to or settled in Russia was overwhelmingly positive, descendants said. In turn, they made valuable contributions to Soviet society, said Blakely, the professor. Agricultural specialists helped devise different uses for materials, such as rope made from hemp. They also helped develop plant species that were cheaper to cultivate. Their contributions provided a boost to the Soviet economy.

Tynes, who was sent to various Soviet republics to teach people how to raise ducks and other waterfowl, became a nationally recognized expert on poultry. Golden helped develop a cotton industry in Uzbekistan. And the African Americans introduced Russians to blues and jazz.

"They had an impact disproportionate to their numbers because they were there precisely because the Soviet leadership was trying to use them as a symbol of what they were trying to build in terms of a truly democratic society," Blakely said. "They were very much in the public eye."

Within years, however, such attention was unwelcome. During the era of Josef Stalin's purges, foreigners were viewed with suspicion and non-Soviet citizens were ordered to leave the country, said Demikovsky, the filmmaker.

Khanga said her grandfather escaped being nabbed by the secret police by a fluke. He was away from home the day they came for him. When Golden dutifully turned himself in, he was informed that the quota of arrests for his area had been fulfilled, Khanga said.

The African Americans were shunned during the Cold War, but it was because they were foreigners, not because they were black, their descendants said. But attitudes toward blacks changed in the1960s with the influx of thousands of students from Africa.

Tynes-Mensah, whose mother was Russian-Ukrainian, said she was keenly aware when she was growing up that she was different.

"I was afraid to go out in public," said the septuagenarian, who has cafe-au-lait skin and a short Afro. "People used to stare. But it was curiosity. They were not angry or aggressive like they are now."


Today, the acceptance of blacks in Russia is far lower compared with what the African American pioneers experienced, said Tynes-Mensah, who runs a nonprofit called Metis that offers support to mixed-race children, the majority of whose fathers came to Russia from Africa.

"Afro-Russians want to feel Russian, but the society doesn't want to recognize them as Russian," she said. "Sometimes [people] will say, 'Go back to Africa.' "

Khanga, a vivacious and charismatic woman who was raised on the gospel songs of Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin, said any obstacles she faced growing up in Russia during the Cold War years were because of her American heritage, not her race.

"I feel comfortable as a black person in Russia," said Khanga, who is married to a white Russian and has a 12-year-old daughter.

Still, in the 1990s she felt compelled to find her roots. She traveled to Africa and the United States, connected with relatives in New York and Mississippi and wrote a book detailing her family's story.

"When I'm in America, I feel that I'm African American because I love going to black churches, I love soul food, I love black music, I love lots of things that unite people of color," Khanga said. "But when I'm in Russia, I feel Russian."

 

Do you blame them for being nostalgic when so many of them were going hungry. Vladimir Putin saved Russia, and that why Washington hates him.

 

Stalin killed more innocent people than Hitler

We should have assassinated him.

 

he was the pure monster ...