The encounter between Africans and people of African ancestry and Russia was reflective of the ambivalence with which Russians viewed their place in the Eurocentric world during the Age of Imperialism. Their own identity as a European nation has been often the subject of heated internal debates and a wide-spread suspicion on the part of other Europeans. Imperial Russia did not take part in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and never established colonies in Africa. The last European nation to emancipate its own serfs Russia had a small but vocal educated class, or intelligentsia , whose prominent representatives routinely condemned the depravity of American slavery. In the eyes of many black observers, Russia’s absence from the histories of slave trade and European colonialism in Africa contributed to its image as a relatively tolerant society, less affected by the curse of European and North American racism.For many Russians, their connection to Africa is embodied in the genealogy of the country’s greatest poet and the national cultural icon – Alexander Pushkin (1799-1937). Pushkin’s great-grandfather Abram Hannibal arrived in Russia as a little African slave boy, purchased at an Ottoman slave market by an emissary of the emperor Peter the Great. Hannibal’s origins remain murky but most historians agree that he was most likely born somewhere in Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia. Adopted by the tsar, who also served as his godfather, Hannibal entered Russian nobility and made an illustrious career in the Russian military, distinguishing himself as a talented engineer and reaching the rank of general-major. Pushkin himself did not shy away from his African ancestry and proudly acknowledged it in verse and prose, celebrating the life of his famous progenitor in an unfinished biography
Arap Petra Velikogo (The Negro of Peter the Great).
That a person of African descent could be embraced by Russians as the most important cultural symbol underscores how differently they viewed race from the majority of other 19th century Europeans. While few black people ever visited Imperial Russia, those who did reported encountering generally benign attitudes, in stark contrast to the racism prevalent elsewhere in Europe and North America. One such traveler, an African-American woman Nancy Prince, spent more than a decade at the Russian imperial court in St. Petersburg during the early decades of the 1800s. Her memoir contains a perceptive analysis of the early 19 th century Russian society, which she deemed welcoming to blacks. Black American tragedian Ira Aldridge found fame on the Russian stage. A close friend of the great Ukrainian bard Taras Schevchenko, Aldridge toured Russia extensively and attained a cult-like status with the theater goers in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and in the provinces. His popularity with the Russian public had little to do with his race and a lot with his acting talents. Yet inadvertently, to Russia’s educated class Aldrige also represented a group of people benighted by American slavery.
With the enormous Eurasian landmass open to its imperialist expansion Russia took no part in the European Scramble for Africa during the last two decades of the 19th century. While not immune to the standard Victorian images of Africa that depicted the continent and its people as savage and in need of civilization, Russians felt no obvious need to civilize Africans. Towards the end of the 19th century the country experienced a period of close and intensely emotional contacts with Christian Ethiopia, an independent African nation that many Russians considered fraternal on account of its Orthodox faith. Russian military advisors, medics, and volunteers were reportedly in the ranks of the Ethiopian army of Menelik II which inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Italian colonial army at Adwa in 1896. Subsequently, Russians founded a hospital in Addis Ababa that for decades to come would become a fixture of Ethiopian capital.
During the period of reforms, generally known as
perestroika and glasnost, ushered in by the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet press commentary on Africa grew increasingly negative. Both political commentators and people in the street often attributed the economic decline of the once-powerful Soviet Union to “too much aid for Africa.” The eventual dissolution of the USSR released the pent-up forces of ethnic nationalisms, including extreme forms of Russian chauvinism. At the time black Russians and African residents in the Soviet Union found themselves targets of racial slurs and even physical attacks, an unfortunate socio-cultural phenomenon that has persisted into the post-Soviet era. In the past decade, on more than one occasion international media has been alerted to an alarming increase in the number of racially-motivated attacks in Russia. At the same time African students continue to arrive in Russia in search of affordable education and a growing number of African expatriates and Russians of African descent have achieved prominence as educators, journalists, TV personalities, musicians, and athletes. Hopefully, the country with such a unique history of friendly encounters with black people will be able to overcome the humiliating handicap of widespread racism.