ANN: Report on Afroeuropeans: Black Cultures and Identities in Europe, Sixth Bi-Annual Network Conference, University of Tampere /Finland/, July 6-8, 2017

Tiffany N. Florvil Discussion

Editor's Note: We are accepting reports from individuals who have attended conferences or symposia related to the topic of Black European Studies. If you are interested in writing a report for H-Black-Europe, please contact Tiffany Florvil (tflorvil@gmail.com).

Afroeuropeans: Black Cultures and Identities in Europe

Sixth Bi-Annual Network Conference

University of Tampere /Finland/, July 6-8, 2017

Panel “Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism: The Soviet and Russian Discontents”, organizer and discussant Dr. Maxim Matusevich /Seton Hall University/

Papers and presenters:

- “What Do We Mean When We Talk about Race? Methodological Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Race in Imperial Russia,” by Dr. Nathaniel Knight /Seton Hall University/

- “Third World Students in the USSR: Soviet Popular Opinion and Reactions,” by Dr. Constantin Katsakioris /University of Bayreuth/

- “Becoming an ‘Afro-Russian’: In Pursuit of Otherness,” by Dr. Tatiana Smirnova /CESSMA, Paris-Diderot-INALCO-IRD/

- “The Icons of Internationalism: Russian-Africans in the Late Soviet Union,” by Dr. Natalia Starostina /Young Harris College/

- “Racism in Former Soviet Republics: A Critical Account,” by Dr. Nikolay Zakharov /Södertörn University/

This panel brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, whose recent work has reflected the growing academic interest in the history of race and racism in Russia/Soviet Union. All five papers addressed the issue of the alleged Soviet and Russian exceptionalism when it comes to the conceptualization and functioning of race and racial difference in Russia and the former Soviet Union. The very complexity of the question eschews simplistic explanations and requires historical contextualization. Nathaniel Knight provided a much needed historical context to this conversation by examining the meanings and practices of race in Imperial Russia and considering the specificity of the Russian historical and cultural context. Knight suggested that rather than expending our efforts in trying to figure out whether or not race “existed” in Russia it might be more productive to identify and analyze the mechanisms for the delineation and structuring of social space in Russia. Was race used as a tool of social mapping in Russia the same way it was used in the West? In what ways were bodies categorized and assigned social value in the Russian context? Knight saw Russia’s specificity in the absence or marginal presence of biological determinism and racial regimes in the country’s prerevolutionary public and administrative life. This is not to say (as it has been sometimes suggested) that Russians were uniquely immune to European-style racialism and racism but rather that Russian elites (which, just as their Soviet successors, tended to be ethnically diverse) operated in a historical context quite distinct from that observed in the West. For example, Russians never sought colonies in Africa and did not engage either in intercontinental slave trade or race-based slavery. In terms of their physical appearance Russian serfs were often indistinct from their Russian masters. Knight noted the absence of a deeply rooted cultural antipathy toward racial mixing and miscegenation in Imperial Russia and encouraged scholars to view racial thinking in Russia in a broader context, in which Russian elites interpreted racial difference and identified the “other.”

Nathaniel Knight’s examination of the meanings and practices of racial difference in prerevolutionary Russian history assumes added significance in the light of the proliferation of recent research on Soviet engagements with blackness, race, and Western racism – both before and after the Second World War. It brings up the specter of continuity in the ways the Russian and Soviet societies (seemingly so dramatically different) engaged with racial difference. In his paper, Constantin Katsakioris drew on rich primary material from the Russian and Ukrainian archives to bring to life and examine the cultural encounters between the Third World and, particularly, African students and the Soviet society during the 1960s and 1970s. Soon after the 1957 Youth Festival in Moscow the Soviet Union began to accept thousands of Third World students for study at its institutions of higher learning. On its surface, this was a successful attempt to showcase Soviet achievements, including the nation’s determined antiracism, to the developing world at the height of the Cold War. However, as convincingly argued by Katsakioris, the encounters between nonwhite foreign students and the Soviet system frequently veered off their predetermined course. African students in particular proved to be the source of multiple headaches for Soviet authorities. These students often refused to follow both written and unwritten codes of Soviet public behavior and challenged the norms of appropriate political conduct. Their presence on Soviet campuses sometimes revealed the reality of Soviet racism and certain incongruity between Soviet antiracist rhetoric and the restrictions imposed on and contested by African students. Katsakioris maintained that some of the resentments that African students encountered when dealing with their Soviet peers had as their source not so much racial as economic and social grievances. In this regard, the Soviet experience remained unique, especially when we consider the status of African students at Western universities during the same time period. Despite the fact that many of these young people (mostly young men) arrived from underdeveloped colonial and postcolonial locations they usually enjoyed a significantly higher socio-economic status when compared to Soviet students. They also claimed a significantly higher degree of political autonomy, freedom of movement (including regular summer trips abroad), and earning potential. Katsakioris suggested that multiple conflicts and run-ins between African students and Soviet authorities and Soviet citizens revealed some of the structural weaknesses of the Soviet system and hollowness of Soviet antiracist discourse.

Tatiana Smirnova took the story of Africans in Russia into the post-Soviet period. Based on extensive field work, which included multiple interviews and semi-participant observations, Smirnova drew some fascinating conclusions about the place of the African diaspora within post-Soviet Russian society. The author argued that a significant number of Africans in Russia had been surprisingly successful in navigating the tumultuous transition to capitalism. Smirnova did not diminish or play down the challenges presented to these “Afropolitans” by the reality of everyday racism and xenophobia, which remain a prominent feature of modern-day Russia. At the same time, Smirnova noted that the academic, entrepreneurial, and linguistic skills possessed by many Africans in Russia (something also noted by Katsakioris but for an earlier period) often put them ahead of the competition. Just as during the Soviet times, Africans in Russia remain the agents of change and transformation, the true messengers of the “Black Atlantic.”

In her paper, Natalia Starostina examined the iconography of Soviet internationalism, powerfully represented by a number of prominent African-Russian cultural figures. Starostina provided a visually engaging presentation, focusing on the oeuvre and public significance of such prominent African-Russians as the poet and actor Jim Patterson and the TV personality and writer Yelena Khanga. Starostina argued that their very presence and prominence in Soviet and late-Soviet cultural and public life strengthened the Soviet claim to “racial exceptionalism” and “colorblind internationalism.” For generations of Soviet citizens (and Soviet sympathizers abroad), Patterson’s performance as a child actor in the famed antiracist Soviet film “Circus” became the primary proof of their nation’s Sonderweg, its elevated moral status vis-à-vis Western racist societies. Starostina viewed the convoluted post-Soviet discourse on race in Russia as at least partially informed but also distorted by this and similar precedents of Soviet antiracism, which often clashed with the “reality on the ground.”

Nikolay Zakharov’s paper provided an engaging coda to the panel as the author focused on the evolution of racialism and racism across the post-Soviet spaces. In his analysis, Zakharov interpreted Soviet antiracism as one of the major sources of post-Soviet racism, amply documented across the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. When the Soviets rejected the Soviet Union they inevitably also rejected “official” Soviet values, among which antiracism figured very prominently. The explosion of racism across post-Soviet states and Russia can be seen as a crude attempt by the disoriented populations to “attain whiteness,” to become part of the developed capitalist world. Thus to engage in racism was also a way to become “fully European.” This is a disturbing observation but one that would probably ring true to many close observers of post-Soviet Russia and its former satellites. Because racism in the Soviet Union was narrowly construed as a “white vs. black” phenomenon (and the one endemic to the West) the Soviets and their post-Soviet successors had few compunctions engaging in other sorts of racialist thinking and open racism – anti-Semitism, anti-Roma sentiments, etc. Zakharov made another intriguing observation: in his view, the ultimate hollowness of Soviet antiracism was an inevitable consequence of the absence of what he calls the “civil society infrastructure.” For antiracism to take root and evolve into a living and actionable phenomenon the society requires an active and free engagement of its citizenry, that is something, that cannot be attained under a totalitarian rule. One is tempted to pose broader questions: Can authoritarian or totalitarian societies be truly antiracist? Can people who are fundamentally unfree engage in genuine campaigns for social and racial justice? Zakharov clearly thinks that they cannot.