[Andy] What started my interest, I should say, in black
Americans in the Soviet Union in the 30s was finding this portrait.
[Andy] Even though I'd gone to grad school, I have a master's degree in Russian
literature. I speak Russian. And I had lived over there in the late eighties.
[Andy] Finding this portrait was a stunning development
for me. How did I not know about this?
[Andy] I didn't know that this was a phenomenon. There were many
African-Americans who went to Russia in the in the 30s.
[VO] In the 1920s-1930s, several hundred African-Americans moved to the Soviet Union
and many of their descendants still live in Russia.
[Elena] I have no Russian blood but, to answer your simple question on how I feel,
[Elena] I don't doubt for a second, I am, of course, Russian
[Francine] The Russians that I meet here, they first they're like, OK, you're
foreigner, ta-da-da but when I speak Russian they’re like: “Wait, wait, wait"
[Francine] You're ours - Russian!
[VO] Back home, Black Americans suffered from racism and a complete lack of prospects.
[Emilia] My dad once looked out of a window
and saw a white woman
Back then, you weren't allowed to look at white women,
and he was afraid that a lynch mob would get him
[VO] So, they decided to leave everything behind and start a new
life in a country about which they knew almost nothing at all.
[Allison] Some of the African-Americans who went to
the Soviet Union in the 1930s found great success
Thanks to that film...
[Jim] I achieved massive fame!
[Kostya] So, what car do you have? You came in a nice one
[Georgy] Jaguar
[VO] And now, almost a hundred years later, history is repeating itself.
[Francine] My great grandfather, George Tynes, went
to Russia on probably the worst times to go anywhere.
[Francine] Why not me? What if I come here?
BLACK IN THE USSR
[GEO] MOSCOW, RUSSIA
[Elena] My grandma's name was Berta Aleksandrovna Bialik,
and my grandpa was Oliver Golden
[Elena] Grandpa was African American, a slave's son
[Elena] At that time, grandma decided
to marry, or tie her fate to, grandpa
[Elena] White girls marrying black Americans, was unheard of
[Elena] And my grandpa and grandma thought they had no future, as a couple, in America
[Elena] Why did my grandparents choose the Soviet Union?
[Elena] Well, firstly, they were enchanted by the ideas of communism and socialism
[Elena] Secondly, of course, the thought of life in a country
that knew no racism was very attractive to them
[Allison Blakely, Professor Emeritus Of History, Boston
University] This is a new country being shaped since it
has a constitution that actually says that they are opposed
to racial and gender and all different kinds of discrimination
[Francine Villa] My grandfather, George Tynes, is from Smithfield, Virginia,
and he ended up in Russia in the most peculiar way. He was able to
land an amazing contract with the Ministry of Agriculture in Russia.
And he pretty much got on a boat and ended up in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
[Blakely] It's important to remember that this was the period of the Great Depression,
and it was also a period in which the Soviet government was
doing massive recruitment of people with technical skills.
[Francine] He graduated university as an agriculturist.
[Francine] There's no career moves, there's no jobs, and there's so much
discrimination. What are you supposed to do? He went
to a country where he had no clue what was going on.
[Francine] You watch Russia on the news, Soviet
Union, communism. Why would you want to go there?
[Francine] George Tynes had a dream and he found a solution and he made history
[Blakely] Some of the African-Americans who went to
the Soviet Union in the 1930s found great success.
[Blakely] You look at Lloyd Patterson and his son, James Patterson.
[Blakely] James Patterson became a national icon as a baby in the famous film Circus
[Andy] The movie Circus has an extraordinary story
behind it. I think it was said to be Stalin's favorite.
[Andy] As we see in the opening scene, there's a
woman running from an angry crowd threatening her
and throwing rocks at her. And you realize that
the bundle she's been carrying is her black child.
[Andy Leddy, Art Collector] This German impresario
who at the climax of the film, reveals
the truth to the audience in the circus, that she has a black child.
[Andy] And of course, the Soviet response is, so what do we care?
[Andy] We don't care if he's purple or polka dotted.
[Andy] And then he little Jimmy is passed to various members of the audience
who each sing him a lullaby and one of the languages of the Soviet Union.
[Andy] I mean, it couldn't be more propagandistic,
but it hit all the right nerves at the time is incredibly popular.
[Andy] Even the song was it «Широка страна моя родная» was
even a sort of a de facto anthem of the Soviet Union
[Song] Oh my homeland is a spacious country
Streams and fields and forests full and fair
I know of no other land where a man may breathe freer air
[Blalekly] It's definitely fair to say that the Soviet Union
was a prominent leader in anti-racism at the government level.
[GEO] WASHINGTON, USA
[Film] It means that in our country, we love all children
Be fruitful and multiply…
have black kids, white kids, red, blue, or even pink-striped kids!
[VO] That little black boy from the Circus movie is now 87.
[VO] He was born and raised in the Soviet Union. He served in the navy as
a submariner. Then, he became a an author, he wrote short stories.
[VO] In the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed, Jim Patterson moved to the
USA, to his father, Lloyd Patterson’s homeland to translate his work into English.
[VO] He now lives alone in a social apartment in Washington.
[Jim] That film...
it made me!
[Jim Patterson] Thanks to that film...
[Jim] I achieved massive fame
[Jim] Stalin knew me because he liked that film, The Circus
[Jim] When we marched in front of the stands...
[Jim] Stalin recognised me in the line
[Jim] Everyone else was white, and I was quite dark
[VO] Jim’s father, Lloyd Patterson, like many
other African-Americans, moved to the USSR to
work on a contract basis, but he loved the country
so much, he stayed and started a family here.
[Andy] He traveled in circles in the Soviet Union, in
Moscow that he would not have in the United States.
[Andy] He had a wife and three sons career. He was busy all the time.
[Andy] His wife was Vera Aralova. She was a fairly well known designer, stage designer.
[Andy] What he saw at that time in nineteen thirty two in Stalin's Moscow
however strange it might sound now, he saw lots of opportunity there.
[Song] Hundreds of roads
and hundreds of byways
are open to you
[Jim] Ross!
[Jim] That's Ross, one of the Americans who came over with my father
[Inessa Ross] My father,
Robert Harry Ross-Johnson,
he came here in 1932,
a political emigrant from America
[Inessa] He was in many films
by Mosfilm, the Gorky Studio, the Yalta studio
[Film] Where are you from?
From Kentucky, sir
- What's your name? - Tom, sir
- Where did you work? - As Mr Shelby's manager
[Corr] Could he have been a film actor in America then?
[Inessa] At the time, I think not
[Inessa] I doubt it
[Inessa] He was born in the town of Auburn, it's in Alabama State
[Inessa] That state was very racist
[GEO] MOSCOW, RUSSIA
[VO] Inessa Ross, the daughter of Soviet actor,
Robert Ross, was born and raised in Russia
and now lives with her son James near Moscow, in a big country house.
[VO] James was a talented young athlete as a boy.
[VO] In the late 1980s, he played for the reserve team of one
of the country’s leading football clubs, Spartak Moscow.
[Inessa] When they were in Dnepropetrovsk,
Beskov let him play for the first team
[Inessa] And when he appeared, he was met with thunderous applause
[Inessa] He was the first...
dark-skinned boy in Soviet football
[VO] So, did racism exist in the Soviet Union?
[Elena] In my neighbourhood they all knew that insulting my colour was very dangerous
[VO] What happened after the fall of the iron curtain, when descendants of the
African Americans got a chance to return to their historical homeland, to America.
[Georgy] I couldn't quite work out what I could actually do there
[VO] And why now, 100 years later, is Russia again attracting African Americans?
[Francine] I love Pushkin
[Francine] Day and night, a learned cat walks all
around, he sings to the right, tells tales to the left
[GEO] MOSCOW, RUSSIA
[Elena] I'm often asked if I ever faced racism in the Soviet Union
[Elena] Yes! Of course, I did
[VO] In contemporary Russia, you’d be hard-pressed
to find someone who hasn’t heard of Elena
Khanga. She’s worked on television since the
late 1980s hosting several popular talk shows,
including the first show on Russian TV about sex
[Elena] Good evening, gentlemen!
[Elena] Thank you for joining us on our first show about love and sex!
[Elena] I was insulted because of my skin colour, because I wasn't like others
[Elena] When I was a kid, I often heard: 'Why are you black?' Children asked that
[Elena] I'd say, 'Because my dad's from Africa'
[Elena] They'd say 'wait, you were born in Moscow,
it's cold here in winter, you should be white by now'
[Emilia Tynes-Mensah] We were simply unique, unusual,
there were no other dark-skinned people
[VO] Emilia Tynes’ father ,George Tynes moved to the USSR in the 1930s,
along with other African Americans, and settled down in the Uzbek SSR,
where he helped to develop cattle breeding on Soviet collective farms.
That's where Emilia spent her early childhood.
[Emilia] The hardest part was childhood, they constantly called us 'negroes',
[Emilia] I really hated it...
but what could I do?
[Emilia] When we moved to Moscow though, in 1954...
of course, it was much easier,
because there were Armenians, Uzbeks, and children of all other ethnicities there
[Elena Khanga, Journalist & Tv Host] There's a difference between
racism in America and the USSR
[Elena] If in America, it was state racism, part of the government system,
in the USSR, it was casual racism
[Elena] Neither my grandpa, Oliver Golden, nor my mum, when they lived in Tashkent,
faced any manifestation of racism
[Elena] They had problems because they were American
[Elena] Firstly, grandpa and grandma couldn't
join the Soviet communist party - that hurt
[Blakely] They knew that there was racism
throughout Europe. But if they went to London or
Paris, they could stay in the very best hotels.
Well, that's not what they experience in America
[Andy] Daily life for an African-American in the 30s was frustrating.
[Andy] There would be parts of town that you would not be able to
go to or you would only be allowed to go to certain stores.
[Blakely] If there were accommodations for blacks, there would be separate toilets.
For example, for whites, it would be separate water
fountains for blacks and they would usually be lower quality.
[Andy] I thought about this many times I don't even I don't know
why more African-Americans didn't try to go to various other places.
Maybe it just didn't occur to them
[GEO] MOSCOW, RUSSIA
[George Tynes] How was it for me in Russia,
with an unusual surname and looking different?
[George] Well, there were certain things but I can't say it had a big impact on my life
like, not being accepted anywhere or told I couldn't do something,
or being dismissed in any way
[VO] When the Soviet Union collapsed, the descendants of African Americans had
the chance to travel and to see their ancestral homeland for the first time.
[VO] George Tynes’ grandson, Georgy Tynes, was one
of the few who went to the US in the early 1990s.
[George] Mine where the first impressions of
anyone who'd just come from the Soviet Union
[George] Things there seemed to make sense and were all well-organised;
good roads, affordable healthcare,
and food in the stores
[George] You could go out at night and buy a
beer, something unheard of in the Soviet Union
[George] I was surprised to see so many dark-skinned people,
[George] I saw lots of black people with expensive cars
[George] I saw that black kids were out of
control, behaving the way young hoodlums do here
[George] Did it feel like a return to my homeland?
[George] Yes, there was a fleeting sense of that
[George] There was a thrill to think this is where my grandfather was from
[Corr] But you didn't stay?
[George] I didn't stay for a few reasons,
[George] I couldn't quite work out what I could actually do there
[George] Why would I want to work at McDonald's after a higher education?
[George] Besides, I grew up in Russia,
[George] I spoke to people who knew Russian, read Russian books; Dostoyevsky
[George] In America, their focus is somehow biased towards business,
a kind of practicality
[George] They're interesting as people, but different, and I just felt that...
[George] I valued my Russian friendships more, so I came back
[GEO] WASHINGTON, USA
[VO] Unlike Georgy Tynes, his aunt Emilia Tynes moved to the USA and
became an American citizen. She has lived there for the last 10 years.
[Emilia] The thing is, it's comfortable, as people like to say here
[Emilia] Life is comfortable but, of course, my heart, belongs to Russia
[Emilia] I don't really understand African
American culture, I hold Russian culture close
[Emilia] In recent years...
[Emilia] I have, of course, seen and heard on
TV about all the killings of African Americans
[Emilia] African Americans who were born in Harlem,
to the poorest families - for them to rise to
the next level - it's practically impossible
[Emilia] Lack of education
[Georgy] We were educated here, in the Soviet Union - it was free too
[Georgy] We had that opportunity
[Georgy] First, the Moscow Institute of Management
[Georgy] Then I did an MBA at the Russian National Academy of Economy
[Corr] 2 degrees? [Georgy] Well, actually, yes
[Georgy] We're in the offices of a company where I'm a shareholder
[Georgy] I'm also the company's current president
[Georgy] It's a medium business, we turnover about a billion
[Corr] A billion roubles? [Georgy] Yes, a billion
[Corr] What car do you have? You came in a nice one
[Georgy] Jaguar
[Georgy] I have a niece in Moscow, Francine,
what's interesting about her is, she was born in Moscow, moved with her mum to the USA,
where she basically lived all her life
[Georgy] Now she's decided to come back to Russia
[Francine] Why did I make up my mind to move to Russia? I wanted to
leave a country where I was facing discrimination, racism on the daily…
[Andy] Have we overcome all the racial problems
from the nineteen thirties? No, not at all.
if you look at the recent events, it's all too frustratingly similar to decades past.
[Francine] There was a situation I remember like it was yesterday.
[Francine] I asked for help from the police, where it was
like an emergency. And then I became the victim
[Francine] I have three police officers grabbed
me and just throwing me down on the ground.
[Francine] And I had a bruise on my hand, bruise on my
arms I thought they were going to kill me.
[Francine] I thought they were going to shoot me. It was by a three
Caucasian officers. It was the worst experience of my life
that I probably do not want to ever, ever live again
[Francine] I was so shaken because I grew up in a normal or
Russian Orthodox family. We're not gangsters. No one has
a gun. We don't have any hoodies. I thought the police
were there to help me. Why aren't they helping me?
[Francine] It's history that's repeated itself over
and over and over again. And it hasn't been fixed
[Francine] When my great grandfather, George Tynes experienced
that discrimination in nineteen, you know, in the Great Depression,
civil rights movement, it's the same thing, just a different version.
[Francine] I've been living in Moscow for one
year. Exactly. I teach English. I'm a teacher.
[Francine] I feel free living in Russia because in Russia, no
matter what time it is. I can walk outside and I'm safe
[Francine] We're sitting outside the metro on the there's a
little benchy area I remember the police officers, two
police officers walking towards us // and my heart's
beating fast, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
[Francine] Why? Because, you know, living in America, you see police,
you're little, you're traumatized I was like: “Olya, talk”. I’m scared.
[Francine] And then she's like, oh, my friend just
moved here from from America. And she's Russian.
[Francine] He's like, Really? Five minutes
later, that same police officer comes back with
the biggest bouquet of flowers, a stranger, and
tells me, welcome to Russia. You belong here.
[Francine] I do belong here. It's a piece of me. // And the more I
the more I'm here, the more I see that. I'm not going anywhere. //
the Russians that I meet here, they first they're like, OK, you're
foreigner, the rapper when I speak Russian and then they wait.
[Francine] You're ours, Russian!
[Elena] My grandpa saw tennis as a symbol of prosperity, a symbol of success
[Elena] Something white people did with their well-off children
[Elena] So, he wanted his child to do all the things that rich, white people did
[Elena] So, what do you think I did when my own daughter was born?
[Elena] When she was 5 or 6, I took her to a tennis school
[Elena] She balked, 'don't want to, don't want
to' I said, 'if grandpa says it, you will'
[Elena] It's hard to say what would have happened
if my grandparents hadn't gone to the USSR
and stayed in New York
[Elena] But I do know that if Grandpa and
Grandma see me from up there, they're very proud
[Elena] Seeing how my mum lived her life,
how things have turned out for me and how my daughter lives now
[Inessa] We're children of coloured people
[Inessa] We were born in a Soviet country
[Inessa] And we're happy
that we have at last
found our homeland
[Inessa] We love and we cherish our homeland. There's nowhere we feel as free,
and if we're asked...
we'll say...
we need...
no other friends
[Inessa] May the whole world know!
[Inessa] We've found freedom
[Inessa] We're the children of coloured people
[Inessa] We're the children...
of a Soviet country