| Stories of black Americans, who fled to the Soviet Union to escape race discrimination [During my first visit to the USSR (1982), I recall being pleasantly surprised to discover a sizable population of Blacks (as they insisted on calling themselves). I did meet several expatriate African Americans, but there was also a large number of Blacks directly from Africa where they were taking advantage of the Soviet Union's programs of helping to educate Africans. Mostly, they attended Patrice Lumumba University. - prh, ed.] Racism in the US in the 1930s forced hundreds of African Americans to leave the country and move to the Soviet Union. Inspired by Soviet ideology, many came seeking a society without racial prejudice. At home, African Americans faced a lack of prospects and restrictions which separated them from society. Desperate to receive equal treatment, hundreds fled their homeland to be free of discrimination in the Soviet Union. Some of them still live in Russia and explain why they left the ‘land of dreams’ and how they gained freedom behind the Iron Curtain. |