In the 1920s and 1930s, Moscow was a crucial site where the collective intelligence of the Black radical tradition was deposited, transformed, and recirculated throughout the African diaspora and colonial world alongside Marxism-Leninism and diverse diasporic anticolonial ideas and practices. Recent scholarship and journalism has touched on this history, but often as curious individual stories. This talk will recover the story of Black anticolonialism in Moscow as a set of collective intellectual, political, and cultural endeavors that was part of a global effort. It will also discuss the ways in which this history has been obscured, from the 1950s to the present.

S. Ani Mukherji is an assistant professor of American Studies at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. His major teaching and researching interests are transnational ethnic studies, global history, US political culture, and international communism.