We are delighted to announce that some of the proceedings of this conference are being published in two volumes with Manchester University Press as part of their new series Racism, Resistance and Social Change – any queries about these forthcoming publications please contact the editors – thanks.
- David Featherstone and Christian Høgsbjerg eds., The Red and the Black: The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic (August 2021)
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was not just a world-historical event in its own right, but also struck powerful blows against racism and imperialism, and so inspired many black radicals internationally. This edited collection explores the implications of the creation of the Soviet Union and the Communist International for black and colonial liberation struggles across the African diaspora. The volume challenges European-centred understandings of the Russian Revolution and the global left and enables new insights on the relations between Communism and various black radical traditions – including Garveyism and various other strands of Pan-Africanism. The volume then makes a major and original intellectual contribution by making the relations between the Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic central to debates on questions relating to racism, resistance and social change in ways which are politically and theoretically generative.
‘This ideologically diverse collection is uniformly well-written and exceedingly informative. The inescapable and unavoidable conclusion it renders is that the Russian Revolution of 1917 delivered a mighty blow against colonialism, imperialism and forms of apartheid alike. Simultaneously, by implication it blazes the trail and illuminates the way forward for those seeking to create a better world.’
Gerald Horne, author of Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary
Contents
Introduction: Red October and the Black Atlantic – David Featherstone and Christian Høgsbjerg
Part I Racism, resistance and revolution
1 Claude McKay’s Bolshevization in London – Winston James
2 From Russian colonies to Black America . and back: Lenin and Langston Hughes – Matthieu Renault
3 African American literature in the Soviet Union, 1917-1930s: Contacts, translations, criticism and editorial policy – Olga Panova
Part II Spreading the Revolution Across the Black Atlantic
4 Bolshevism and African American agency in the African American Radical Press, 1917-1924 – Cathy Bergin
5 International Communist Trade Union Organisations and the call to Black toilers in the interwar Atlantic world – Holger Weiss
6 Firebrands, trade unionists and marxists: The shadow of the Russian Revolution, the colonial state, and radicalism in Guyana, 1917-1957- Nigel Westmaas
7 Racializing the Caribbean Basin: The communist racial agenda for the American hemisphere, 1931-1935- Sandra Pujals
8 The Left Book Club and its associates: The transnational circulation of socialist ideas in an Atlantic network- Matheus Cardoso da Silva
Part III Africa, the Soviet Union and the Cold War
9 The beginning of the Cold War in the Gold Coast? – Marika Sherwood
10 Decolonization and the Cold War: African student elites in the USSR, 1955-1964 – Harold D. Weaver
11 ‘People’s Friendship’ in the Cold War: The Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University – Rachel Rubin
Afterword: A Black Journey of Red Hope – Maxim Matusevich
Watch the London online book launch on 18 October 2021 with Winston James, Olga Panova and the editors here
Passcode: !H.YbYB8
There is also a second volume, Revolutionary Lives of the Red and Black Atlantic since 1917, published in April 2022 edited by David Featherstone, Christian Høgsbjerg and Alan Rice as part of the same series.
This volume explores the life histories of a wide range of radical figures whose political activity in relation to the black liberation struggle was catalysed or profoundly shaped by the global impact and legacy of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Detailed engagements with the political trajectories of figures including C.L.R. James, Paul Robeson, Walter Rodney and Grace P. Campbell opens up a set of diverse perspectives and engagements with different articulations of black internationalisms in the wake of the Russian Revolution. This enables a focus on the different and contested terms on which these relations were shaped, negotiated and lived. Such a biographical approach brings a vivid and distinctive lens to bear on how racialized social and political worlds were negotiated and experienced, and also on historic black radical engagements with left political movements and organising.
Contents
Introduction: A galaxy of stars to steer by – David Featherstone, Christian Høgsbjerg and Alan Rice
I – Black Bolshevism
1 Hubert Henry Harrison: Black radicalism and the Colored International – Brian Kwoba
2 Wilfred Domingo under investigation: the ‘Negro menace’ of 1919 – Peter Hulme
3 Cyril Briggs: guns, bombs, spooks and writing the revolution – Jak Peake
4 Gendering the Black radical tradition: Grace P. Campbell’s role in the formation of a radical feminist tradition in African American intellectual culture – Lydia Lindsey
II – Interwar intersections of Red and Black
5 Clements Kadalie, the ICU and the transformation of Communism in Southern Africa, 1917-31 – Henry Dee
6 Pan-Africanism and Marxism in interwar France: the case of Lamine Senghor – David Murphy
7 Black Americans in Russia: Ira Aldridge and Paul Robeson – Lisa Merrill and Theresa Saxon
III – Politics and Poetics
8 Raya Dunayevskaya: the embodiment of the Red/Black Atlantic in theory and practice – Chris Gilligan and Nigel Niles
9 European Marxist or Black intellectual? C.L.R. James and the advancement of Marxism beyond Russian-Leninism – Tennyson S. D. Joseph
10 Poetry and Walter Rodney’sThe Unfinished Revolution- David Austin
11 ‘Hard Facts’: Amiri Baraka and Marxism-Leninism in the 1970s – David Grundy
Afterword – Hakim Adi
Reviews
‘This luminous collection brings several revolutionary lives to its pages to show us how these figures both experienced and shaped the world around them. The legendary figures whose stories are told here, many of them central to the black radical tradition, emerged at the intersection of the “Red” and “Black” Atlantics. Their lives and struggles offer us rich visions of possibilities and solidarities beyond the confines of the nation-state which are needed now more than ever. This book is an invaluable resource for such hopes and dreams.’
Priyamvada Gopal, Professor of Postcolonial Studies, University of Cambridge
The Red and the Black - The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic 