He was a skilled worker hired by the Soviet government for economic reasons, but he also became a showpiece in the Soviet campaign to bolster its legitimacy, both internationally and domestically. Robert Robinson was caught up in these related currents. Thousands of engineers and skilled workers from Europe and America went to the Soviet Union to help build the new industrial enterprises and to train a new generation of Soviet technicians. (2) At the same time, the adoption of a program of rapid industrialization required importing large amounts of foreign machinery and technical expertise. Stalin's regime launched a campaign to attract visitors, who were given access to select showcases of socialist achievement and pampered with banquets, receptions, and publicity.
For many white Americans, Robinson represented one of their greatest fears: Communist exploitation of racial grievances to produce mass discontent among American blacks.Īt the end of the 1920s, the Soviet Union embarked on a propaganda offensive to convince the world of the superiority of the Communist system. For some black Americans, Robinson's experiences were proof that the Soviet Union was living up to its progressive ideals, at least as a haven free of racial prejudice. For the Soviet regime he became a symbol of racial oppression under capitalism and of communism's promise of racial equality. Yet within a short time after his arrival in Russia, he achieved unintended fame, becoming one of the best-known Americans residing in Russia, a cause celebre for the Soviets and an object of both condemnation and admiration in the United States. A Jamaican-born immigrant, Robinson was a reserved and unassuming man with little interest in politics. ROBERT NATHANIEL ROBINSON was a twenty-three-year-old toolmaker in Detroit when he decided, like many thousands of Americans and Europeans in the early 1930s, to take a job in the booming industries of the Soviet Union.
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