Robert Robinson (engineer)

Robert Robinson (1907–1994), the 'poster child for Soviet antiracism', was a Jamaican-born toolmaker who worked in the auto industry in the United States. At the age of 23, he was recruited to work in the Soviet Union. Shortly after his arrival in Stalingrad, Robinson was racially assaulted by two white American workers, both of whom were subsequently arrested, tried and expelled from the Soviet Union with great publicity.

Starting with a one-year contract by Russians to work in the Soviet Union, Robinson twice renewed his contract. After the publicity of his assault, he felt unable to return to the US and accepted Soviet citizenship. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering. His repeated attempts to visit outside the USSR finally resulted in an approved trip to Uganda in 1974, where he asked for and was given asylum. He married an African-American professor working there. He finally gained re-entry to the United States in 1976, and gained attention for his accounts of his 44 years in the Soviet Union.

Life

Born in Jamaica, Robinson moved with his parents to Cuba, where he grew up.^[1] He and his mother were abandoned by his father when he was six.^[2] His mother was born in Dominica and had gone to Jamaica while employed by a doctor.^[3] He and his mother emigrated to the United States and settled in Detroit. He went to local schools and became a skilled toolmaker at the Ford Motor Company during the expansive years in the auto industry.

In 1929 Ford and the Soviet Union agreed to cooperate on a car plant in Gorky to turn out Model T cars.^[4] In 1930, a Russian delegation visited the Company, where Robinson worked as a toolmaker.^[5] The delegation leader offered him and others a one-year contract in the Soviet Union. The pay would be far greater. They were promised free rent in a grand apartment, maid service, and a car. At 23, fearing he could be laid off at any moment due to the effects of the Great Depression and the institutionalized racism in the United States, and taking into account that a cousin of a friend had recently been lynched in the South, Robinson accepted.^[6]

He arrived in Stalingrad on July 4, 1930 to begin working in a tractor factory.^[7] The only African American among a contingent of workers from the United States, Robinson was beaten by two white American workers shortly after his arrival. After the incident the Soviet press turned him into a minor celebrity, publicizing his case as an example of American racism.^[8]

After his first year he renewed with another contract. After his second one-year contract expired in June 1932, Robinson went to Moscow to obtain a return ticket to the United States. Officials persuaded him to accept another one-year contract working at a ball-bearing factory.^[10] He was one of 362 "foreign specialists" at the plant when he started working there.^[11] After the assassination of Sergei Vironovich Kirov, Stalin's assumed successor, on Dec 1, 1934, the preferred status of foreign specialists ended "overnight".^[12]

On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the USSR. Due to the nature of Soviet news reports, Robinson and others at his plant suspected that the Soviet forces were suffering devastating losses.^[14] The Russians flocked to church that day, surprising Robinson, although after twenty-four years of Communist rule there were no priests to lead the congregation.^[15] Throughout the rest of the war, the government tolerated attendance to religious services.^[16]

Robinson survived Stalin's purges, famine and the German invasion of Russia, with Hitler's army arrested only 44 miles (71 km) from Moscow. During the war, he almost died from starvation, having as meals six or seven leaves of cabbage soaked in lukewarm water. Despite the war, the Soviets arranged for continued education. According to his autobiography, in July 1944, Robinson graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering, but did not receive his diploma until two years later.^[17]

Since the 1950s, he had annually applied for a vacation visa abroad and each time, it was denied. Through the influence of two Ugandan ambassadors, Robinson was granted permission to visit Uganda in 1974. He bought a round-trip ticket so as not to arouse suspicion. Once there, he appealed for refuge, which was temporarily granted by Idi Amin. In 1976, Robinson married Zylpha Mapp, an African-American professor who was working at a university in Uganda.

Through the efforts of Ugandan officials, and U.S. Information Service officer William B. Davis, he was eventually allowed to re-enter the United States and re-gained United States citizenship. He lived in the US until his death in 1994. Following his return, he gave interviews about his insights into Soviet life from the inside, and was also featured in the Detroit Free Press. He was honored by the Ford Motor Company, 60 years after he began his work there. He moved to Washington, D.C. with his wife.^[18]

After returning to the United States, Robinson wrote his autobiography, with the writer Jonathon Slevin. It was published as Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside The Soviet Union (1988). He described acquaintances in the Soviet Union: Henry Smith, a journalist; Robert Ross, a Soviet propagandist from Montana; Henry Scott, a dancer from New York City; Coretta Arle-Titz, actress and music professor; John Sutton, an agronomist; George Tynes, also an agronomist; and Lovett Fort-Whiteman, an English teacher. While advising and acting in a Russian film production of the American racial drama Deep Are The Roots, (Глубоки корни) ^[19][20][21] Robinson met Wayland Rudd^[22] an actor, as well as "native-born blacks in the Soviet Union" since "Blacks have lived in the Caucasus since the mid-1700s, when they were brought out of Africa to Russia by Catherine the Great".

Robinson noted meeting two famous African Americans in the 1930s, the writer Langston Hughes and the singer and actor Paul Robeson, who had traveled to the Soviet Union. At the time, Robinson asked Paul Robeson to help him escape the Soviet Union. Robeson declined to do so as it would harm his relations with the Soviet leadership.

Robinson died of cancer in 1994. Among those attending the funeral were his wife,^[23] William B. Davis, and Mathias Lubega, former Ugandan ambassador to the Soviet Union.^[24]

References

Further reading

• Robert Robinson; with Jonathon Slevin (1988). Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union. Washington, DC: Acropolis Books. ISBN 0-87491-885-5
• Tim Tzouliadis. The Forsaken: From the Great Depression to the Gulags – Hope and Betrayal in Stalin's Russia. Little, Brown, 2009. "The Alabaman Herbert Lewis was locked up in a Stalingrad prison [for assaulting Robinson]... his arrest, observed the visiting American reporter William Henry Chamberlin, seemed only to strengthen the "racial chauvinism" of the three hundred other Americans working at the tractor factory." (p.39-40)
• Roman, Meredith L. Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of U.S. Racism, 1928–1937 (Justice and Social Inquiry) University of Nebraska Press; Reprint edition (July 1, 2012), ISBN 0803215525. Chapter 1: American Racism on Trial and the Poster Child for Soviet Antiracism. "On Thursday, July 24, 1930, around six o'clock in the evening at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, Robert Robinson was walking away from the cafeteria when two white American men, Lemuel Lewis and William Brown, confronted him." (p. 26)
• Smith, Homer. Black Man in Red Russia. Johnson; Ex-Lib edition (1964). ASIN: B000IQ7HGQ
• The Ghost of the Executed Engineer
• An American Engineer in Stalin's Russia: The Memoirs of Zara Witkin, 1932–1934. Witkin, Zara (1900–1940)
• Alexander Dolgun (1926–1986) survivor of the Soviet Gulag who returned to his native United States.
• Thomas Sgovio (1916–1997) American artist, and former inmate of a Soviet GULAG camp in Kolyma
• Victor Herman (1915–1985) Jewish-American initially known as the 'Lindbergh of Russia', who then spent 18 years in the Gulags of Siberia.
• George Padmore (1903–1959) Pan-Africanist, journalist, studied in the United States and moved to the Soviet Union.
• William Henry Chamberlin (1897–1969) American journalist during the trial of Robinson's assailants.
• Jack Littlepage (1894–?) American mining engineer who helped the Soviet gold industry (1929–1937).
• Alexander Pavlovitch Serebrovsky (1884–1938) Soviet petroleum and mining engineer executed during the Great Purge.
• John Scott, BEHIND THE URALS: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel. Worker at Magnitogorsk.