View article

AbstractAfrican students in the Soviet Union staged a demonstration in Red Square on December 18, 1963, that became an international incident. Triggered by the mysterious death of a Ghanaian student, the protest aired Africans’ concerns over their security in the USSR. These concerns had crystallized over the previous few years, when the first contingents of African students had experienced racial misunderstanding and harassment alongside official expressions of goodwill. The international climate tended to fuel these concerns as well ; the Western press, to which the students often had access, took up evidence of racial tensions in the Soviet Union with particular zeal. The political, social, and cultural factors that played into the African students’ demonstration and its aftermath offer a new angle on the history of the later Khrushchev years.