Being Black in Russia
Emilia Tynes-Mensah grew up doing what other Soviet children did: she read the classics of Alexander Pushkin, listened to the symphonies of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and was fed the propaganda that life in the USSR was better than anywhere else. Inside her home, however, the atmosphere was different. There, she listened to American jazz, celebrated Thanksgiving, and heard stories of the racial struggles in America. Her father was among hundreds of Black Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union in the decades following the 1917 Russian Revolution. “My father didn’t know anything about this country; he didn’t know what to expect,” Tynes-Mensah recalled. She noted that music was a vital link to their roots: “Everybody who came to the Soviet Union from America would be told, ‘Please don’t forget to bring some records.’ He loved Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Paul Robeson.” Most African Americans who moved to Russia seeking a better life—desperate to flee the hardships of Jim Crow-era Ame...