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Witness History

Black in the USSR

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2016

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Robert Robinson, a Jamaican born engineer, was recruited to work in the USSR from a factory in Detroit in 1930. Having had his US citizenship revoked, he spent 43 years unable to leave the Soviet Union. Dina Newman tells his story, using BBC archive.

(Photo: Robert Robinson in the 1920s. Source: BBC archive)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and thank you for downloading witness on the BBC World Service with me, Dina Newman.

0:06.0

Today we're going back to 1930 and the first ever race trial in the Soviet Union.

0:12.0

The plaintiff was a young African American engineer who had

0:15.3

been recruited to work in Stalingrad. I came across his story in the BBC Archives.

0:28.8

Its 1930 and 23 year old Robert Robinson has arrived in the USSR after being

0:34.5

recruited from the Ford factory in Detroit.

0:37.0

America was going through the Great Depression.

0:47.0

All around means at the forts, people were being discharged, Being a black man, I expected mine any day.

0:58.0

The USSR was developing its industry and the country needed skilled labor.

1:04.1

Soviet recruiters were sent around the world not to find communist supporters but workers

1:09.3

who would bring the latest technical know-how. Robinson knew nothing about the Soviet Union and was certainly

1:15.5

not a communist when he was approached by Russian recruiters.

1:19.4

The leader of the group came to me and asked me,

1:22.5

would you like to come to Soviet Russia

1:24.9

and teach our young people?

1:27.6

I didn't think they were serious

1:30.1

because I didn't know where they came from. I said sure with pleasure to get rid of them.

1:35.5

But within a few weeks Robinson received a very attractive offer, a one-year contract on

1:41.1

$250 per month and free travel between Russia and the USA.

1:47.0

It was the same deal as had been offered to 370 other American workers. None of them knew anything about the Soviet system and all felt

1:56.2

as if they just won the lottery. Robinson's future looked bright, yet he was apprehensive and not about the Russian communists, but about his own

2:05.3

countrymen. All except him, were white.

...

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