Histories of Color: Blackness and Africanness in the Soviet Union

What were the meanings of blackness in Soviet Union? Marxist ideology offered no clear guidance for conceptualizing blackness, and Russian Empire provided few historical references. But discrimination against people racialized as black was a major problem twentieth century that Union unable to ignore. As institutions from different parts African continent diaspora cultivated political cultural connections, those connections entailed collisions among multiple ways difference. Blackness could not easily be translated into taxonomies, but, propelled by series conjunctures global politics, never stopped looking linkages analogies. Two primary challenges, recurring forms over several eras, were: How conceptualize relationship between diaspora? And how should it relate racial dynamics elsewhere domestic conditions within its own borders? Drawing on two scholars’ original fieldwork recent scholarship an emerging field, this article proposes novel, interactive approach construction Africanness USSR.