Publication: Race and Class
Publication Date: 01-APR-05
Format: Online - approximately 4666 words
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Quist-Adade, Charles
Article Excerpt
Abstract: An analysis of the content of three publications, Pravda, Izvestiya and Novoe Vremya, from 1985-1992 shows how news coverage of Africa was increasingly marginalised as Gorbachev's 'glasnost' reforms took hold. The stance adopted towards Africa changed from communist paternalism to outright negativity as the continent was used by politicians and journalists as a metaphor for poverty and backwardness. The result was rising racism against Africans living in Russia.
Keywords: communism, glasnost, journalism, media, perestroika, Soviet Union
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While the adverse coverage of Africa in the western mass media has often been discussed, what is perhaps less well known is how the media in communist and post-communist Russia, supposedly established on the Marxist-Leninist principles of 'proletarian internationalism' and the much-vaunted 'solidarity with peoples fighting for their spiritual, political and economic liberation', covered Africa. (1) What follows is an attempt to fill this gap, identifying the common themes in press coverage during the Soviet pre-glasnost era, during glasnost itself and immediately afterwards. The coverage of Africa in three different Soviet publications, Izvestiya ('News'), Pravda ('Truth') and Novoe Vremya ('New Times'), was sampled from 1985, 1987 and 1989-1992. An opinion poll of students and lecturers at various St Petersburg educational establishments was also conducted in March 1991, five months before the aborted coup which led to the end of the seventy-year-old communist regime and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
According to the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, twenty to thirty people die each year in racist attacks in Russia today--a far cry from the vaunted internationalism of an earlier era. (2) But what my research demonstrates is how lacking was any fundamental challenge to ethnocentric and racial prejudice during the Soviet period. And the failure to translate slogans of solidarity into genuine antiracist sentiment meant that, once the communist system passed away, the new Russia was plagued by a rampant and unchallenged racism.
Pre-glasnost coverage of Africa
After independence from European colonialism in the 1960s, many African leaders came to see the Soviet system as a more humane alternative to western capitalism. They hoped for a more realistic and balanced media coverage of their continent, especially when, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet Union pitched camp with the non-aligned nations in the demand for 'a new and more just, balanced and democratic' international information and communication system under the auspices of the United Nations. However, what they hardly suspected was that media coverage of international news in the first socialist country would follow not only the logic of Cold War politics, but also the 'basic instincts' of ethnocentrism.
Historically, the Soviet media and political bureaucracy had painted a rather simplistic, idealistic and exotic picture of Africa. A well-known poster, popular among Soviets before perestroika, summarises it all. It depicts, inside a map of Africa, a muscular African man who has broken a hefty chain fastened around his hands and feet. The inscription on the famous poster reads 'Svoboda Afrike' ('Freedom to Africa'). Ostensibly, this was meant to elicit the sympathy of Soviet citizens for the cause of African freedom. But this mercy-eliciting and paternalistic propaganda was carried out hand-in-hand with subtle and sometimes overt attempts at sowing the seeds of fear and suspicion. While school children were taught compassion for Africans, poetry and cartoons directed at young people featured the Soviet version of 'Tarzan' images of Africa. For example, The Circus, a film shot in the 1930s, was meant to demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism, but also highlighted Soviet feelings of paternalism towards Africans. A section of the film includes the statement: 'In our country we love all kids. Give birth to children of all shades of colour. They can be black, white, red, even blue, pink ...' However, another segment contains the line: 'Mixed marriage between the black and white races is a racial crime.'
Textbooks used in the lower grades were written to infuse students with compassion for blacks, yet the racist undertones were clear. A textbook published in 1967 used stories of racial abuse of African-Americans, claiming that a Soviet young pioneer (3) saved a young black slave. She was said to have bought the slave for a mere five roubles (the equivalent of US$5) from capitalist 'sharks' at a slave auction in the United States. The paternalism is difficult to disguise....
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
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