Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union by Robert Robinson
This unforgettable memoir recounts the life of Robert Robinson, a Jamaican-trained tool maker who spent the first third of his life in the U.S., Jamaica, and Cuba, and the last two-thirds (44 years) in the USSR.
At the age of 21, in 1920, Robinson migrated to the U.S. with his mother and younger brother. Despite his engineering training in Cuba, he faced racial discrimination in the U.S. and was denied the opportunity to work as an engineer.
Undeterred, Robinson followed up on job ads that touted engineering positions in the auto industry. However, he was rejected again in Detroit, for the same reason, because of his race.
A white career counselor suggested that listing his training as "janitor" might help him get a job. Robinson took the advice and was hired immediately.
Through hard work and determination, after three years, he worked his way up to a machinist-trainee position at the Ford Motor Company. Since he was already a journeyman machinist with more experience than his white counterparts, Robinson spent a significant amount of his time dealing with racist harassment from them.
His tormentors aimed to reduce him back to his racial place as a Negro janitor, forever limiting his opportunities. However, Robinson's superior skills and work ethic eventually caught the attention of a Russian trade delegation visiting the company specifically to recruit American engineers.
The delegation's interest in Robinson led to his selection, along with several dozen white machinists. They all signed lucrative yearly contracts to travel and work as industrial engineers and engineering trainers in the USSR.
It later became evident that this Russian recruitment program was part of a larger Stalinist Communist purge of White Russians from ranks of power in the Soviet bureaucracy and industry.
Robinson and his white colleagues were the first Americans to benefit from this post-revolutionary "political score-settling" between Red and White Russians. It offered a significant advantage for this fortunate group, as it allowed them to enjoy lucrative jobs abroad while the Great Depression raged unabated in America.
During his first year in Russia, Robinson's only real challenge on the job was the persistent racial harassment he faced from fellow white Americans. Despite refusing to eat or room with him, they nevertheless continued to harass him. Robert Robinson seemed to be living rent free inside their racist heads.
Already resentful of his selection to the program, and envious of his superior professional skills, now that they were all attending Communist Party-organized social functions, they had yet a new reason to resent him: his exceptional dancing abilities.
As a result of being an excellent dancer, Russian women treated him with respect and even flocked to him at parties if only to be introduced to the latest popular American dances. But this new attention only fueled the hatred and rage his racist American cohorts already felt for him. They became increasingly agitated and their rage flew out of control when two of them tried to kill him.
Fortunately, the Russian police intervened and foiled this attempt, saving his life. The two Americans were arrested and tried. Both were found guilty and expelled from the program, returning to the United States disgraced as persona non grata. After the verdict, the case gained attention in Pravda, Russia's largest newspaper, and briefly made Robinson a cause ce'lèbre. The harassment also ceased.
While this level of notoriety was not what he had sought, Robinson could not help but notice the stark contrast between how each country had handled the racial harassment he had faced.
In the United States, the racial harassment was ignored and allowed to persist, festering across national borders into Russia.
In contrast, the Russian police had acted decisively, and the Russian courts swiftly followed this up, administering a form of justice rarely found for blacks in America. Together, the Russian police and courts had effectively ended the racial harassment once and for all.
Owing to this outcome, Robert was convinced more than ever that Russia would protect his rights better than America would. Consequently, he renewed his contract for a second year.
But little did he know at the time that signing a new contract based solely on the analysis of that one race-based incident would be the biggest mistake of his life.
For what appeared to be swift and fair justice -- a combination of quick police action and prompt judicial action -- was actually a cruel propaganda hoax, a Communist Party ruse, a stunt orchestrated by the state at Robinson's expense.
It would take Robert Robinson 44 years to recover from this error in judgment about the true nature of the Soviet system.
Immediately upon signing the new contract, his life took a dark turn. Without his consent, Robinson's American passport and citizenship were confiscated and revoked, replaced by Russian versions of the same.
Overnight, and against his will, Robinson went from being a protected foreigner with all the rights and privileges afforded foreign passport holders, to mandated Soviet citizenship. In an instant, his American citizenship was irreversibly revoked, and he was no longer free to leave Russia.
Only after signing the new contract did Robinson fully comprehend the implications of his actions and the magnitude of what he had done to himself.
His preoccupation with his racial identity had in fact placed him at the very bottom of the Russian societal hierarchy:
He was not a Communist party member, the highest rung on the ladder; nor was he a foreigner with the privileges of a foreign passport, the second highest rung. Instead, he had become a Russian citizen, but not in the traditional sense. He was a foreigner who had been assigned Russian citizenship by fiat, the absolute bottom rung of the societal ladder.
As soon as he signed the second-year contract, the door to the open-air Stalinist prison system known as Russia had slammed shut behind him.
For the next 44 years, Robert Robinson descended into the depths of Stalin's Communist grinding machine, where every aspect and every minute of his life was now under complete surveillance and state control. A single misstep could result in his imprisonment in the gulag or a swift execution.
Many times over the next four decades, Robert Robinson asked himself whether freedom from racist harassment was as important as freedom from arbitrary state-sanctioned terror? The answer was clear, and always the same, no. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
His only respite from this pervasive, intimate, and personal terror was his work. However, as the hardships of World War II emerged, Robinson's infatuation with revolutionary Russia had long since come to a complete end. It took some time for him to realize that Russia always had been a rigidly enforced police state. Its society was a Potemkin facade, primarily driven by propaganda and intimidation. Only those who joined the Communist Party had temporary respite and some protection, while those like Robinson were left to the wolves.
During those tumultuous war years when hunger gnawed at the bellies of everyone, and countless lives were sacrificed as mere fodder for Hitler's relentless war machine, Robinson's work was repeatedly recognized for its invaluable contribution to the Russian war effort. This recognition brought him a sense of honor, pride, and a glimmer of peace of mind. However, it was far from sufficient. His heart yearned to reunite with his brother and mother before she succumbed to the ravages of time.
Occasionally, he was paraded around like a trained seal, compelled to regale black American entertainers traveling through Russia, with tales of the supposedly benevolent Soviet system.
In the early years of his enforced exile, the parties organized for these staged demonstrations, even with the lying and deception, were more enjoyable than painful. At least at these gatherings, he had the privilege of meeting and greeting a number of renowned individuals, including Paul Roberson.
However, as the years passed and he tirelessly sought their assistance in escaping Russia, their refusals only deepened his despair, serving as a stark reminder of the gravity of his decision, the protracted duration of his predicament, and the escalating desperation of his situation. It simply reinforced the obvious unwavering conviction that escape was nearly impossible.
What Robinson endured for the remainder of his exile was a confluence of racism Soviet style, a general disdain for foreigners, and a specific animosity towards not being a member of the Communist Party. Individuals who found themselves at this unfortunate convergence were truly the outcasts of Soviet society.
While it was undeniable that Robinson had the opportunity to meet esteemed figures in the government and world-class entertainers who visited, he was also subjected to constant surveillance, discouraged from engaging in romantic relationships with Russian women, repeatedly overlooked for promotions, and never granted the privilege of leaving the country.
As time wore him down, it ignited within him an intense yearning to seize any remaining opportunity he could to escape Russia.
It took him an arduous four decades before he managed to secure a vacation visa to Uganda, where he defected and eventually found his way back to the United States. What an extraordinary odyssey. Five stars.
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