By 1930 Robinson was working at the Ford
plant in Dearborn, Michigan.
Robert Robinson was apparently trained in Cuba
to operate machine tools, and after he moved
to the United States in the 1920s he became one
of the few Black machinists working at Ford’s
River Rouge plant at Dearborn, just outside
Detroit.
In April 1930 a Russian delegation visited the
plant. The Russians had great respect for Ford’s
production methods and were hoping to tap into
American expertise to promote Russia’s
industrial development. Robinson, the only
Black man in his 700-man department, was
offered a contract for a year to work and teach
his skills in the Soviet Union, at a Stalingrad
tractor factory. He was then earning $140 a
month, and was offered "$259 a month, rent
free living quarters, a maid, thirty days paid
vacation a year, a car, free passage to and from
Russia, and they would deposit $150 out of each
month's paycheck in an American bank."
For various reasons Robinson decided to accept
the offer, a decision which shaped his life to an
extent he could not, at the time, have fully
understood. Chiefly his decision was based on
economic considerations; the Depression in the
USA was worsening, and he feared that, as a
more recently hired worker, he would be among
the first laid off. However he also thought that
racism would be less of a problem in Russia; he
noted that the cousin of a friend had been
lynched just three months before. He later
noted that he had also had the impression that
socialism was better than capitalism, though he
always maintained that he was never a
Communist.
Robinson returned to the USA in 1933 on holiday
and to renew his US passport, visiting with his
mother, Octavia, in New York. Though he had
no idea at the time, this was the last time he
would be in America for 45 years.
