‘The Racial Question in Soviet Russia’ by Lovett Fort-Whiteman from The Daily Worker Saturday Magazine Supplement. Vol. 2 No. 47. March 7, 1925.

THERE was no country in the world more harassed with racial problems than Russia before the revolution. In the Crimea, it was Tartar against Turk,- in the Caucasus, Georgian against Armenian; in the Ukraine Gentile against Jew, and in Asiatic Russia, Moslem against Christian.

It might be said that the Jew was the Negro of Russia, insofar as the Jewish question exhibited in its general outlines many features common to the Negro problem of America. Under the czarist regime, the Jew was not permitted to live in the larger and more important cities of Russia and in only a few places was he permitted to carry on agricultural pursuits. A fundamental measure of the czarist policy toward the Jewish race in Russia was that of segregation, and thus the Jew was confined to what was called the Pale Settlement, a strip of territory on the Austrian border.

THE Jew was subjected to periodic wholesale lynchings, termed in Russian “pogroms.” No Russian of reputed respectability would patronize a case that served Jews. The Jew was in every sense of the term a pariah in Russian society. In Asiatic Russia, particularly in Turkestan, the native people were not given equal accommodations on tramways, in theaters, in restaurants, etc., nor were adequate school facilities afforded them. No Moslem native was permitted to live in what was known as the European section of the cities in Turkestan.  Of the many racial groups within the old Russian empire, each and every one had its social problems. Racial maladjustment was an outstanding fact in the social life of old Russia.

BUT following the proletarian revolution, the Bolsheviks approached these racial problems with a directness and a scientific understanding such as characterizes the statesmanship of no other country in the world. Wherever the Jew, prior to the revolution, was strictly segregated and ostracized from the full life of the nation, today he has become a complete integer of national life. He lives wherever he chooses, and the question of the Jew no longer constitute a subject of political discussion. In respect to the races of the Caucasus, of Crimea, and of Eastern Russia, which constituted colonials within the old Russian empire, the recent territorial realignment made by the Soviet government has meant the creation of a number of republics in which each of these races may enjoy group autonomy as a solution of the national and racial problems and the means by which every trace of racial friction is obliterated.

THE native race of Turkestan is the Uzbek people, but since October Turkestan has been converted into what is known as Uzbekstan. An Uzbek race which, before the revolution was subject to the most repressive policy on the part of the czar, finds itself today a quite free and independent and a politically important people.

The Kirghizes people, a nomadic race of the Russian steppes, have for themselves a Kirghizes republic. The Turkomans, of middle Asia, have their republic. The Armenians, who have suffered much, both under the sultan of Turkey and the czar of Russia have their own republic. It is the same with the Tartars, the Georgians, etc.

THESE many republics do not stand alone as small political entities, isolated from the larger and more developed Russian life, but together they constitute the Russian Federation of Socialist Soviet Republics, or the Russian Union of Socialist Republics.

When one analyzes the racial problem that once existed in Russia, it is surprising to note the strong similarity that obtained between them and the Negro problem of America. It is striking to note in these former Russian problems the same measure of repression, the same tricks of deception, the same attitudes, etc., that characterize race relationships in America. In the very inherent nature of the Soviet system, race friction today in Russia is unthinkable.

A PRIME motive of my trip to Russia was to ascertain to what extent the Soviet system of government was able to effect a solution of the many vexatious racial problems of old czarist Russia. My eight months stay in Russia, attended with travel and study, has rendered me thoroughly convinced that the solution of the his Negro problem in America is possible only after the revolutionizing of the American social order. Race prejudice is not an inherent thing in the mental make-up of the individual, but springs from the capitalist order of society. The individual, the child, it may be noted in the most remote section of the Southern states, does not affect racial arrogance until it has been brought in touch with public institutions—the school, the church, the press, etc. The very nature of capitalism makes this form of society dependent upon racial disharmony within a given capitalist state, upon religious antagonisms, etc. Only seven years after the proletarian revolution, the extent to which all vestiges of racial hostility has been eradicated is marvelous, to say the least.

IT is probable that no colonial people suffer the weight of imperialism to the extent that the Negro does, whether he be in the new world or in Africa. If we look at the map of Africa, we note that there are only two free and independent Negro states— the Republic of Liberia on the West coast and the Abyssinian empire on the Eastern coast. The rest of Africa has been parceled out among the imperialist nations of Europe, and we find Portugal politically responsible for territory in Africa twenty-one times the size of Portugal itself; Belgium with territory almost forty times its size; and Britain and France ruling far more black than white men, all in all. This is an unnatural situation and certainly cannot continue.

AND why do we find these European powers maintaining a political hold on the African continent? It is for no other purpose than to maintain markets for their surplus products and even to have a ready source of raw material for their home industries. And the system inherently brings the dispossession of the native from his land, forced labor, military conscription, a policy of extending only a mini, mum of education, and in every respect the institution of a policy or the part of the imperialist nations that shall function in ever keeping the native African dependent, backward and in every way a pillar of the imperialist structure.

The black man cannot rise under the weight of capitalism.

THE extent of the power of any given imperialist state over the, darker races may be a fine measurement of the extent to which racial problems obtain within that particular state, for in the very nature of imperialism the working class of the dominant race assumes an attitude of arrogance and racial superiority towards the colonial peoples in that state.

One who has just returned from Russia experiences an astonishment in reading the many false accounts in our great metropolitan papers of the conditions in Soviet Russia, and certainly of the Communists. It is to be expected that the capitalist class of all countries must ever keep up a campaign of lies against Soviet Russia, the first government of workers and peasants, for they know that Russia, left alone, becomes a source of the deepest inspiration to the workers of all lands. Too, they know that the workers of Russia are interested and are willing to give their active support to the workers of all other countries in their effort to establish a free society— a society free of oppression of the working class, a society free of all racial friction and in which the masses should have the opportunity of imbibing and benefiting by all that our twentieth century has brought us in the way of culture.

THE American Negro has never been contented under his social conditions; he has begun many movements with the definite aim of his social uplift. The outstanding social abuses always uppermost in the mind of the Negro masses are those of lynching, Jim Crow-ism, residential segregation, political disfranchisement in the South industrial discrimination, etc. His reformist organizations are directed primarily towards the removal of these social Inequalities. But we find that those who direct the fate of the race are themselves so involved in the interests of the-ruling class of this country that they, out of self-interest, are always compelled to limit their actions. Race riots, lynchings, racial hostility in general between the black and white worker are conditions conducive to the maintenance of the system.

The Negro petty-bourgeois leader, the Negro intellectual, have betrayed the interests of the working class of the race time and time again. And if the Negro is developing at this time a real revolutionary group, it is because more and more of the members of the race are coming to see that freedom and the solution of the Negro problem can only come thru a mass movement on the part of the Negro working class.

THE Negro proletariat holds the key of salvation of the race. The Communist society of the future alone will save the race, and it will be in the new society only that the inherent and native power of the race will be enabled to bloom forth in full fruition, and the Negro to give hir true and real worth to human progress. The Workers Party is the Communist Party of America, and it is the logical party to which the Negro race should ally itself, for it alone is the only party which can propagate the idea of equality for all peoples.

The Saturday Supplement, later changed to a Sunday Supplement, of the Daily Worker was a place for longer articles with debate, international focus, literature, and documents presented. The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

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