The Red and the Black: The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic: 13-15 October, Preston

header_logoConference to be held at the Institute for Black Atlantic Research (IBAR), University of Central Lancashire, Preston, 13-15 October 2017, to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution

Keynote speaker: Professor Winston James, University of California, Irvine.

With special performances from Linton Kwesi Johnson (invited) and David Rovics

Registration now open.

Claude McKay addressing the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, Moscow in 1922.
Claude McKay addressing the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, Moscow in 1922.

Every Negro who lays claim to leadership should make a study of Bolshevism and explain its meaning to the coloured masses. It is the greatest and most scientific idea afloat in the world today…’
Claude McKay, 1919.

The Russian Revolution was not only one of the most critical events of the twentieth century in its own right but an inspirational event across the ‘black Atlantic’ as a blow against racism and imperialism.  For colonial subjects of European empires internationally as well as black Americans, the Russian Revolution promised the hope of a world without oppression and exploitation.

This conference aims to build on the growing scholarship and literature in this area to explore the impact the revolutionary events in Russia during 1917 made across the African diaspora and the subsequent critical intellectual influence of Marxism and Bolshevism on the current of revolutionary ‘black internationalism’ in its aftermath.  We are also interested in exploring how the leaders of the Russian Revolution viewed Africans and people of African descent – the so-called ‘Negro Question’ in Communist discourse.

Visit the conference website for more information.

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