1963
I have never heard before of the events I am about to describe and it was a completely unexpected discovery.
A couple of weeks earlier, the body of Edmondo Asare-Addo, a student of Kalinin Medical Institute from Ghana, was found near Moscow. On 18 December, African students in Moscow organized a rally in memory of Asare-Addo on the Red Square. They were convinced that their mate was stabbed by a Soviet student. The accounts of this rally are extremely scarce. I have found only three sources. One of them is a transcript of a program by RFE/RL, broadcasted on 19 December 1963: Africans March on the Kremlin:
Radio Free Europe/Munich Non-Target Communist Area Analysis Department Background Information USSR 19 December 1963 AFRICANS MARCH ON THE KREMLIN The numbers involved in yesterday's protest march by African students to the Kremlin suggest a high degree of solidarity and organization on their part in the face of an parent miscarriage of Soviet justice. At present there are only about 1400 African students in the USSR, and since 500 took part in the demonstration (New York Times, 19 December 1963) it seems that more than a third of all the Africans now at Soviet universities believe first that Mr. Asare-Addo was murdered and secondly that the motive was at least partly racial prejudice, Since some of the demonstrators came from points as remote as Tashkent and Odessa it is clear that they were protesting against discrimination in general rather than out of sympathy for the dead man in particular, whom they almost certainly did not know. The degree of organization involved points to the failure of the long-standing Soviet policy of refusal to recognize the Black African Students Union. This refusal can only be explained on the grounds that the Kremlin feared the emergence of a non-communist, pan-African body which might present unwelcome political demands. The march on December 18th shows that such a body, with a high degree of cohesion, is a de facto reality even if at present it operates without using the name of the BASU. One of the questions raised by the mass movement of African students to Moscow, naturally enough, is how it was financed. The stipend paid by the Kremlin to the Africans at Kiev University, for example, is 90 rubles a month. Yet a Russian student is paid only 24 rubles a month, and still manages to live tolerably. The jet fare from Tashkent is only about 45 rubles, and therefore it is not difficult to see that the demonstrators could well have flown to Moscow at Khrushchev's expense. There have been signs recently of a Soviet intention to reduce some of the privileges granted to foreign students,[l] ------------------ [1] See Izvestia, 27 November 1962, letter from V. Zorin. [page 2] and the aftermath of the protest march seems likely to lead to tighter restrictions in the short-term future. As for the students themselves, their conviction that Mr. Asare-Addo was murdered and the contest between it and the official medical claim that there were "no signs of violent death" are bound to increase their doubts as to their own physical safety. Already they feel not only that the Russian workers are often hostile to them, but also that the police turn a blind eye in any brawl rather than offer them adequate protection. The net result is likely to be less enthusiasm for Soviet higher education in the future. At present there are an estimated 11,0000 foreign students in the USSR, compared with 46, 000 in Britain alone. The adverse ratio for the USSR is therefore already strikingly large when the propaganda flourishes which accompanied the inauguration of Lumumba University (the most segregated university in Europe[2] are recalled. In March 1963 about one-sixth of the African students in Sofia left Bulgaria in protest against Zhivkov's efforts to break the All-African Students Union. It will be interesting to note whether a similar exodus from the USSR develops as a result of "The death of Mr. Addo and the inept efforts of the Soviet authorities to break up the march to the Kremlin. It is understandable that Khrushchev's militia should have been taken by surprise in this case. Alter all the MYD has remarkably little experience of organised, genuine political proteat. Although the major result of December 18th is the loss to the Soviet image in Africa, an important by-product will be the increased awareness of the Moscow population as to how demonstrations are staged by independent political movements in free countries. A second side-effect will be greater public appreciation of African resentment at discrimination in the USSR. Regrettably racial tension is rising in Eastern Europe as a result of the events in Sofia, Prague and Moscow this year. The lesson to be drawn is that the problem is universal, and not confined to South Africa or the southern part of the United States as Moscow would have the world believe. Higher education in London or Leningrad brings social, cultural and technical benefits to the students from the underdeveloped countries, but it does not of itself bring political advantages to the donor country. Moscow is learning its lesson in this respect extremely slowly. Yesterday's protest march on Red Square may help to drive it home. r.r.g. ------------------ [2] There are 2600 colored students and only 400 Soviet citizens at the University.
The second article was published in Time magazine on 27 December 1963:"We Too Are People". Here are some excerpts:
Not since the Trotskyite riots in the 1920s had Moscow seen anything like it. While crowds of Russians watched with amazement, more than 400 African students last week battled Red cops in the streets, inside Red Square itself, right past Nikita Khrushchev's own office window. "Moscow — A Second Alabama," said one crudely lettered sign, in Russian and in English. "Stop Killing Africans," warned another placard.
Mourning Bands. The race riot was touched off by the mysterious death of Edmond Asare-Addo, 29, a second-year medical student from Ghana who was studying at Kalinin Institute, about 100 miles northwest of the capital. On the eve of his marriage to a Russian girl, the student's body was discovered near the railroad tracks of a suburban Moscow station. The Soviet police claimed that Asare-Addo, drunk, had fallen down in the 11°-below-zero weather and frozen to death. But Ghanaians, who knew that the marriage was fiercely opposed by the girl's Russian friends, insisted that the youth was stabbed below the chin and tossed into the snow.
…
Prague has erupted in two race riots within two years. Last February in Sofia, Bulgarian militiamen wielded clubs against 200 Ghanaians who were marching down the main street demanding nothing more than their own campus organization. In Moscow, Africans have been smoldering for years over thinly disguised racial discrimination. Except for a token number of Russian students, the dining rooms and dormitories of Lumumba U. (which Africans sardonically call "Apartheid U.") are segregated. Africans find it difficult to date a Russian girl. Students squirm at the stares they get in public and object to poor service they often receive in restaurants. Despite professions of brotherhood, many Russians still think Africans are half-civilized strangers who have just emerged from the jungle.
Pravda commented (in Russian):
The reactionary circles in the West, who oppose the education of the specialists from the young countries of Africa and Asia, spread absurd information about the allegedly "unfriendly attitude" of the Soviet people towards the African students who study in the USSR. This time a sad accident which led to the death of a student from Ghana became an occasion for a new campaign of slander.
Since the information of such events was not available from the official Soviet sources, I assume that these two articles were based mostly on the direct information from the rebelling students and, in part, on rumors. Considering the amount of mutual slander in the years of the Cold War, we could doubt the objectivity of this information. So, the report of the Soviet police is indirectly confirmed by the known fact of a mass celebration of Kenya's independence which took place on the night when Asare-Addo was killed. Another thing worth to be mentioned is that someone invited the students to the embassy of Ghana to receive the Christmas gifts. There were no gifts in the embassy and the indignant students demanded that the embassy provides them with financial support. When the embassy refused, they went to the Red Square. Let's not forget also that the opposition to Kwame Nkruma was gaining strength in these years and they might provoke the events, trying to raise the discontent among the students. And one more point. From my purely subjective POV, the prevailing attitude of the Soviet citizens to the black people in 1960s was very positive. Perhaps, it might be apprehended as a "positive racism" — in spite of the warm feelings, the distinction between the white and the black was still drawn clearly. Of course, this does not exclude possibility of racial crimes, but the last quoted paragraph of the article in Time ("In Moscow, Africans have been smoldering for years over thinly disguised racial discrimination") was by no means true.
1976
Soviet dissident and human rights activist, Vladimir Bukovsky, who had been imprisoned in the USSR, was exchanged in Zurich for former leader of the Chilean Communist Party Luis Corvalán. 21 years later, Vladimir Bukovsky plans to become a candidate on the Russian presidential elections of 2008 — probably, the only honest candidate. See the article in Wikipedia about Vladimir Bukovsky for more information about this outstanding man.
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