Through the long years Robinson just worked
hard and tried to keep out of trouble with the
K G B.
1945-73:
His Christian faith helped him through, as he read his bible and thought of God every day; he went to a church each Sunday across the road from the KGB headquarters. Partly because of his faith, which discouraged casual sexual relationships, he never responded to the interest in him shown by some Russian women. He also feared that the women might be agents of the K G B trying to entrap him. In general the lack of personal freedom in the Soviet system made deep and lasting relationships virtually impossible.
There were positive aspects to his life in Russia.
He reached heights in his profession as a
mechanical engineer which would have been
almost impossible for a Black American at home
at that time. He received medals and bonuses for
his engineering design work. As one of the few
Black Americans in the country he was called upon
to advise producers of films and plays dealing
with inter-racial relationships in the U S A, but
he felt that the authorities were only interested
in stereotypes which fitted in with their
propaganda against the Americans. He also had
the opportunity to meet prominent Black visitors
to Russia, such as Paul Robeson and Langston
Hughes; he tried unsuccessfully to get Robeson's
help to return to the U S A. He did not get on
well, however, with the Black American
Communists who were living in Russia, because of
his lack of enthusiasm for the regime and its
ideology, and his greater interest in Black racial
pride.
In March 1953 Stalin died and an era ended in
Russia. The millions who had idolized him were in
despair and hundreds were trampled to death in a
stampede at the badly organized funeral. As
Robinson noted this disaster was not reported
either in newspapers or on radio.
Two years after Stalin’s death Robinson’s hopes of
leaving the U S S R were raised when the
remarkable Black American journalist, William
Worthy, who was then the Soviet correspondent
for CBS News and the 'Baltimore Afro-American',
arranged for him to be allowed to go to Britain.
Items in the Jamaican 'Daily Gleaner' in July and
August 1955 suggest that what the British
Government intended was that Robinson should
return to Kingston where he was born. Letters
and comment in the paper indicate that there
was local resistance to the possibility of a
Communist agent being planted in the island.
Norman Manley’s People’s National Party had
won the general election earlier in the year.
Although the P N P was a left wing party, it had
only three years before gone through
considerable upheaval in expelling prominent
Communist-leaning members of the Party;
Manley would certainly have rejected the idea of
the return of Robinson, whose ideological
position was totally unknown. It seems likely that
Jamaican opposition was responsible for Robinson
being unable to leave Russia in 1955.
So Robinson’s Russian exile continued. In 1957 he
witnessed the Russians’ excitement at the Soviet
achievement in launching the first man-made
satellite, Sputnik; they ‘beeped’ greetings to
each other on the streets. In 1959 he met briefly
the U S diplomat, Bill Davis, who nearly two
decades later was to engineer his return from
exile. In 1961 he observed Robeson’s final trip to
Russia, when he seemed to find himself in
opposition to Khrushchev over treatment of the
Jews. Robeson fell ill with his final illness soon
after.
Then in 1973 Robert Robinson finally got his
break.
