UROP in History: Black Americans in the Soviet Union

Madeleine Stout, Ph.D. candidate in History, is directing a UROP project on how African American activism against racialized violence and the lack of civil rights in the United States, coupled with how the USSR and the U.S. publicized the treatment of African Americans, makes a case for extending the Cold War’s origin to the 1920s. Stout’s dissertation focuses on tracing the experiences of African American women in the Soviet Union and how it influenced their writing and activism back in the U.S. The UROP project helps contextualize and set the scene for her dissertation by highlighting the complicated relationship between the U.S. and USSR and how it affected and in turn was affected by problems of race and gender. 

Stout saw that there were independent research areas within the broad project that she had proposed. During the interview process, she noticed the different strengths and passions of the UROP students and was able to match their interests to her research needs. Because their topics were quite distinct, as well as for scheduling reasons, Stout met with the students individually rather than as a group.

This is the first time that Stout is directing a UROP project. She loved the idea of introducing students to history and mentoring them in primary research. She has three students working with her. Zoe, a second-year History major with a minor in English; Kirill, a Humanities major; And Kaysyn, a second-year English and African American Studies major.

Zoe got interested in history in high school when she discovered the Beatles and then got curious about Cold War history. As this project focused on the Cold War before the Cold War, it was the natural choice for her.

Kirill chose this project because he thought that he could bring something to it that others would not be able to - translate articles from Russian newspapers. Kirill grew up speaking Russian. His interest in history was piqued by taking part in the National History Fair in middle school. He got totally absorbed in the archival research for his project and realized that this was the most fun he had in a long while.

Kaysyn got interested in African-American history in high school. She was part of a summer academy devoted to African-American studies. As her special interest is the intersection of history and literature, she found this project to be a great fit: it allowed her to work on the historical context of the Harlem Renaissance.

What got you interested in UROP?

Zoe: I got an email about UROP, and I would probably have ignored it, if not for one of my classmates who was in UROP at the time. She had talked about her work, and I decided to try it too.

Kirill: When I registered for classes, I was told that I had to take an Engage 100 class, a class designed to help bridge the gap between high school and university. My dad is a UROP mentor, and he suggested I take that for my Engage 100 experience.

Kaysyn: I was in the Global Scholars program in my freshman year. Part of the requirement of the course was to apply for something else, an internship, a research grant, another program or similar. As many other global scholars had done UROP and had all been positive about it, I completed my application for UROP partly to satisfy my Global Scholar requirements.  

What is your project about?

Zoe: I looked at U.S. State department records containing Russian/ Soviet newspaper cuttings from the 1920s and 30s to see how the Soviet Union described the United States, especially the treatment of its workers and racial minorities. I also searched through the Chicago Defender, a historically Black newspaper, for articles by Black authors on the Soviet Union during the same time period.

A lot of the articles in the Chicago Defender were written by Homer Smith Jr. who was part of a delegation of Black writers to the Soviet Union in 1932. He reported on his own experiences as well as other Black people while there.

Kirill: My project was to look at Soviet newspapers like Pravda. It took me a while to work out which issues I needed and how to access them. It felt a lot like the inscription above Dodd Hall, The half of knowledge is to know where to find knowledge. Eventually, through consulting bibliographies, for instance the Bibliography of Soviet Bibliographies, I found the articles I wanted.

I translated the coverage of the Robert Robinson trial, a Black mechanic doing contract work in the Soviet Union, who was assaulted by two white American fellow workers in 1930. I also translated articles on Ada Wright’s travels through Europe in 1932. Two of her sons were on trial in the Scottsboro case in Alabama where nine Black teenagers were falsely accused of raping two white women. Robinson’s assailants were tried, found guilty, and deported. In the Scottsboro case the accused were unable to get justice because of the rigged jury system in Alabama.

The goal of the work was to compare coverage of the same events in the Soviet and U.S. press. That’s where my work ties into Zoe’s project.

Kaysyn: I looked specifically at the Black writers who traveled to Moscow in 1932. They were invited by the Soviet Union to make a film about racism in the USA. These were all Harlem Renaissance writers, like Langston Hughes, Louise Thompson Patterson, Dorothy West. I focused specifically on Hughes and West and how they wrote about the Soviet Union, before, during, and after their trip. They stayed in the Soviet Union for a year but were interested in different things.

What was the most challenging thing about UROP?

Zoe: For me, there were two big challenges. One was technical, getting used to working with microfilm. The machines were not easy to handle, and the quality of the microfilm was very uneven. The other challenge was understanding the reports that the American diplomats wrote about the Soviet press cuttings that they sent to Washington, D.C. They mentioned a lot of events and people that I had not heard of. As I had to provide context for the cuttings and their annotations, I had to do a lot of impromptu research to find out what they were talking about.

Kirill: I also encountered two main challenges. One was getting hold of the material I needed to work on. The other was combining my passion for the UROP research with the assignments of the UROP colloquium.  The themes of the UROP workshops were useful, but I always felt torn between completing the work for them and doing the actual research.

Kaysyn: The hardest thing for me was how much material there was! Both West’s and Hughes’ papers are in separate archives. Both wrote long letters recording the details of their daily lives. It was hard to find material that was relevant to my project. Then both also wrote in shorthand which was hard to read. They were writing to their friends who knew them and their handwriting. I did not.

The other thing that was difficult was trying to find a good balance in time. I had other classes and other things in my life, but I also wanted to take the time to create something that I was proud of.

What was the best part?

Zoe: I realized that I like doing historical research. I had never worked with primary sources before. My plan for the future did not involve pursuing history after undergrad; I wanted to go to law school. But after doing this UROP project, every time I was thinking about my future, I would settle on something history-related and not law school.

Especially, when I was looking through the newspapers, I kept messaging my friends:  I can’t believe I am having so much fun with this, I am turning into a nerd. So, discovering my love for historical research was the best part.

Kirill: For me, it was finding something after searching for it for a long time. Scrolling on that microfilm reader and eventually finding the article I was looking for. Or finding one that I wasn’t looking for! There was also a moment when I was very proud of myself for figuring out how to search through a bunch of OCR transcribed issues from the Daily Worker online. 

Zoe: I had those little moments of success too. I found this little snippet from 1929 when there was the big conference from the 3rd Communist International, and they mentioned briefly, we need to focus more on appealing to Black authors, and I thought – this is what we are looking for, and I almost started crying in the library.

Kaysyn: While I just complained about the amount of material that I had to comb though, it did allow me to get to know these artists as people. I got to read their thoughts. They were so dramatic. I got to learn so much about their interpersonal dynamics. There were complete letters just detailing why someone did not like another person. It was so interesting to see what they kept in their archives.

Kirill: When you read history books, you see dates- months, days, years. But then when you get into primary sources, you see ‘Friday’ or ‘Tuesday’ and you realize that the people you study lived through ‘real’ days.

Kaysyn: When you see the love that is there or the hate, you can see the real people behind the names.

Zoe: I found that too when looking at the newspapers. Today, we critique public figures in social media, but back then, this happened in the newspapers too. You could feel the emotions of the writers come out.

What advice would you give to students who are interested in UROP?

Zoe: Definitely, apply! The application is very short, and it is easy for Humanities majors to get selected – even if you don’t want to do a Humanities project. It is a great way to get used to working in academia.

Kirill: Find a good project and find a good mentor for that project. As you have to learn from your mentor how to do things, select someone you want to work with. They will teach you how to write an abstract, make a poster; this is a learning on the job opportunity. I relied on Madeleine a lot for all these things.

Kaysyn: Always go for it. I had not planned on doing more things with History when I came into the program. I was even questioning if I should pursue academia as a thing in itself. I am a first-generation student, I feel the need to make money, and academia is not where you go to make money. But doing UROP and doing a project that was a bit outside of my wheelhouse gave me that clarity without having to take extra classes. It made me realize that I would be deeply dissatisfied as a person if I did not work in academia.

Final comments?

Kaysyn: I would say, keep in touch with the people you worked with in UROP and also keep in touch with your research mentor. Madeleine has introduced me to many cool people and events that I would not have known about. So don’t just think of your UROP project as something to complete and go on but keep the connections you have made and the friendships that came from working in a team and with your mentor.

Kirill: Make sure you get the right mentor. You will want to work with a faculty member or a graduate student, someone who has experience mentoring others and knows about conducting research.

Zoe: Yes, use the interviews for the projects as a way to assess your mentor, not just as a mentor but also as a person. You want to ask: do you have something in common that you can bond over outside the specific project?

Kaysyn: Also – sometimes your UROP project can help you with assignments for other classes. I learned so much about Dorothy West and that she had such a detailed archive that is accessible, this influenced my decision in working on a research project this summer, and especially as now I know how to do research.

Madeleine: They each found such great documents, letters, reports, timelines. I will certainly give them credit in my dissertation – and also the book, when that comes out. I will be happy to continue as their mentor and to write letters for them if they need them. I don’t believe in inspiring students to get involved in History and then to cut them loose once the semester is over.