Blackness and Soviet Creative Education

This article examines the experiences of African students at the Gorʹkii Literary Institute in the 1960s and 70s, a period when the Soviet Union positioned itself as a champion of anti-imperialism and racial equality. Through case studies of Gaoussou Diawara and Fikre Tolossa, it explores the contradictions between the public celebration of African writers and the more complex, often racialized, dynamics they encountered. While officially embraced as symbols of socialist internationalism, these students were also subject to exoticization and subtle forms of exclusion. Based on archival materials, memoirs, interviews, and literary texts, the article argues that African writers in the USSR responded to these tensions with ambivalence, expressing admiration for the Soviet project while downplaying or reframing discrimination. Their experiences reveal how the ideals of socialist solidarity retained meaning even when undermined in practice, offering insight into the strategic ways postcolonial intellectuals negotiated belonging, dignity, and ideological commitment

Admiration · Champion · Cognitive reframing · Ideology · Meaning (existential) · Period (music) · Solidarity · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Soviet and Russian History