Robert Robinson:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Robinson_(engineer)
Robinson moved with his parents to
Cuba, where he grew up.
[3] He and his mother were abandoned by his father when he was six.
[4] His mother was born in
Dominica and had gone to Jamaica while employed by a doctor.
[3] He and his mother emigrated to the United States and settled in Detroit. He went to local schools and became a skilled toolmaker at the
Ford Motor Company during the expansive years in the auto industry.
Robert Robinson (1907–1994) was a
Jamaican-born toolmaker who worked in the auto industry in the United States. At the age of 23, he was recruited to work in the Soviet Union. Shortly after his arrival in
Stalingrad, Robinson was racially assaulted by two white American workers, both of whom were subsequently arrested, tried and expelled from the Soviet Union with great publicity.
He arrived in
Stalingrad on July 4, 1930, to begin working in a tractor factory.
[8] The only African American among a contingent of workers from the United States, Robinson was beaten by two white American workers shortly after his arrival. After the incident the Soviet press turned him into a minor celebrity, publicising his case as an example of American racism.
[9]
In 1937, the US government ordered Robinson to return home or relinquish his citizenship. Robinson chose to stay in the Soviet Union due to the continuing depression and accepted Soviet citizenship although he later regretted this decision. He survived Stalin's
Great Purge while many of his foreign acquaintances in Moscow vanished in 1936–1939.
[1]
Robinson survived the
German invasion of Russia, during which Hitler's army was stopped only 44 miles (71 km) from Moscow. During the war, he almost died of starvation, with some meals consisting of six or seven cabbage leaves soaked in lukewarm water. Despite the war, the Soviets arranged for continued education. According to his autobiography, in July 1944, Robinson graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering, but did not receive his diploma until two years later.
[17]
In 1947, he starred as a black American in a film about
Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay.
[1] He also advised and acted in a Russian film production of the American racial drama
Deep Are The Roots, (Глубоки корни).
[18][19][20]
Through the efforts of Ugandan officials, and
US Information Service officer William B. Davis, he was eventually allowed to re-enter the United States and re-gained United States citizenship in 1986.
[1] He lived in the US until his death in 1994. Following his return, he gave interviews about his insights into Soviet life from the inside, and was also featured in the
Detroit Free Press. He was honored by the
Ford Motor Company, 60 years after he began his work there. He moved to
Washington, D.C. with his wife.
[21]
After returning to the United States, Robinson wrote his autobiography, with the writer Jonathan Slevin. It was published as
Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside The Soviet Union (1988).
Robinson died of cancer in 1994. Among those attending the funeral were his wife,
[22] William B. Davis, and Mathias Lubega, former Ugandan ambassador to the Soviet Union.
[23]