User:Carson277/sandbox

Decide whether African Americans in the Soviet Union should be a part of the Afro-Russians page. Also, definitely look into more contemporary information on the Afro-Russians page to make the article more up-to-date.

Something I am wondering is whether it should be a broad analysis of Black people in the Soviet Union. Claude McKay is a key perspective to take into consideration, but he was a Jamaican poet not an African American.

Early Soviet Period
The Early Soviet Period in Russia was marked by a focus on increasing the speed of industrialization and the reconstruction of the economy following almost two decades of war. Following the 2nd Communist International, John Reed, a journalist who served as the head of the Communist Labor Party, extended invitations to "Negro 'revolutionists'" to visit Moscow, Soviet Union. During the 1920s and 1930s, a multitude of African Americans traveled to the Soviet Union. These "sojourners" were specialized laborers and intellectuals with expertise in the arts, engineering, and agriculture. Some of the well known African Americans who visited the Soviet Union include: Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Oliver Golden, George Tynes, and John Sutton.

One of the most notable aspects of the Black experience during the Early Soviet Periods were the debates on "The Negro Question" during the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1922. Jamaican poet and leader of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay, visited Russia in 1922 to participate in the 4th Comintern. The goal of this meeting was to contextualize the struggle of African Americans in the United States as a part of a larger movement against capitalism and colonialism led by the Communist Party. The conference ended in a resolution titled "Theses on the Negro Question" which detailed the Communist Party's stance on the race issues faced by Black people around the world. The resolution ended with a pledge from the Fourth Congress to support "all forms of the black movement which aim either to undermine or weaken capitalism and imperialism or to prevent their further expansion." In January 1923, the International Press Correspondence published Claude McKay's speech to the 4th Congress of the Comintern entitled "Report on the Negro Question." During his speech, McKay proclaimed that "The Third International stands for the emancipation of all workers of the world, regardless of race or color." For McKay, part of contextualizing the African American fight for Civil Rights within the struggle for emancipating the international working class involved drawing comparisons between the Communist and American approaches for addressing race issues. Specifically, the Communist Party invited people of color to Moscow to debate the best way of emancipating the working class and people of color. McKay and other African Americans in the United States saw the meeting of the Third International as a concrete step toward freeing the working class of the world because it validated the African American experience and brought it into the overall fight against capitalism and colonialism. This contrasts the American approach — the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment — which McKay saw as being "merely on paper;" an empty symbol of African American liberation. Though, not everyone in the Communist Party was in agreement with Lenin's strategy for addressing "The Negro Question." John Reed argued that Lenin's traditional Nationality Policy would not be applicable because "the Negro" were not interested in national independence; they were Americans and wanted America to be their home. Instead of proposing African American nationalism, Reed suggested that the Communist Party think of "the Negro" as a laborer, which is how they in which they were discussed during the 1922 Comintern.

McKay continued to write about the relationship between the Communist Party and African Americans in the Crisis magazine published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In his article titled "Soviet Russia and the Negro," Claude McKay wrote on his experience in the Soviet Union following his trip to Western Europe in 1919. During his stay in Western Europe, McKay came to the realize and "the effectiveness of the insidious propaganda" used against the "Negro Race." McKay tells the story of when a respondent of a Danish newspaper who suggested that he should not be considered representative of the Black population because during her tenure in America she "found all Negroes lazy, bad, and vicious, a terror to white women." In the article, McKay juxtaposes his experiences in Western Europe with his experience in Soviet Russia. In Europe, he faced racism and prejudice on the personal and professional levels; however, in Soviet Russia he was treated as a celebrity. During every meeting with students, children, and factory workers, McKay "was received with boisterous acclaim" and "mobbed with friendly demonstration." Furthermore, Claude McKay refers to his time in Soviet Russia as "the most memorable of my [his] life." He became emboldened by the Soviet intelligentsia because they were interested in his identity as a poet and intellectual rather than as a "Negro." The fervor with which McKay was received by people in Soviet Russia is evidence of the Communist Party's position regarding "The Negro Question" under Lenin.

Not everyone in Soviet Russia was in agreement with Lenin's approach to addressing the role of "the Negro" in furthering of the Communist agenda. John Reed, a journalist who served as the head of the Communist Labor Party, was one person in particular who took issue with Lenin's approach. He argued that "The Negro... does not demand national independence. They [sic] consider themselves first of all Americans and feel entirely at home in the United States."