Red and the Black

David Featherstone is a Reader in Human Geography in the School of Geographical & Earth Sciences at the University of GlasgowChristian Høgsbjerg is a Senior Lecturer in Critical History and Politics in the School of Humanities at the University of Brighton

'This ideologically diverse collection is uniformly well-written and exceedingly informative. The inescapable and unavoidable conclusion it renders is that the Russian Revolution of 1917 delivered a mighty blow against colonialism, imperialism and forms of apartheid alike. Simultaneously, by implication it blazes the trail and illuminates the way forward for those seeking to create a better world.' Gerald Horne, author of Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary'Featherstone and Høgsbjerg must be credited with putting together a fantastic edited collection which makes both an important contribution to keeping alive, and shedding new light on, herstories and histories of Black radical rebellion. In doing so, they have further reminded us of the struggles that have, in different ways, been central to the Black Lives Matter movement in recent times, as well as wider transnational (and interconnected) opposition to neo-imperialism.'Stephen D. Ashe, University of Durham, Ethnic and Racial Studies

• Introduction: Red October and the Black Atlantic – David Featherstone and Christian HøgsbjergPart I Racism, resistance and revolution1 Claude McKay’s Bolshevization in London – Winston James2 From Russian colonies to Black America … and back: Lenin and Langston Hughes – Matthieu Renault3 African American literature in the Soviet Union, 1917-1930s: contacts, translations, criticism and editorial policy – Olga PanovaPart II Spreading the Revolution Across the Black Atlantic4 Bolshevism and African American agency in the African American Radical Press, 1917-24 – Cathy Bergin5 International Communist trade union organisations and the call to black toilers in the interwar Atlantic world – Holger Weiss6 Firebrands, trade unionists and Marxists: the shadow of the Russian Revolution, the colonial state and radicalism in Guyana, 1917-57– Nigel Westmaas7 Racialising the Caribbean Basin: the Communist racial agenda for the American hemisphere, 1931-35– Sandra Pujals8 The Left Book Club and its associates: The transnational circulation of socialist ideas in an Atlantic network– Matheus Cardoso da SilvaPart III Africa, the Soviet Union and the Cold War9 The beginning of the Cold War in the Gold Coast? – Marika Sherwood10 Decolonisation and the Cold War: African student elites in the USSR, 1955-64 – Harold D. Weaver11 ‘Peoples' Friendship’ in the Cold War: the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University – Rachel RubinAfterword: A Black journey of Red hope – Maxim Matusevich