This edited collection explores the inspiration of the Russian Revolution of 1917 for black radicals across the African diaspora. The volume challenges European-centred understandings of the Russian Revolution and the global left and enables new insights on the relations between Communism and various black radical traditions.

Introduction: Red October and the Black Atlantic – David Featherstone and Christian HøgsbjergPart I Racism, resistance and revolution1 Claude McKay’s Bolshevization in London – Winston James2 From Russian colonies to Black America … and back: Lenin and Langston Hughes – Matthieu Renault3 African American literature in the Soviet Union, 1917-1930s: contacts, translations, criticism and editorial policy – Olga PanovaPart II Spreading the Revolution Across the Black Atlantic4 Bolshevism and African American agency in the African American Radical Press, 1917-24 – Cathy Bergin5 International Communist trade union organisations and the call to black toilers in the interwar Atlantic world – Holger Weiss6 Firebrands, trade unionists and Marxists: the shadow of the Russian Revolution, the colonial state and radicalism in Guyana, 1917-57– Nigel Westmaas7 Racialising the Caribbean Basin: the Communist racial agenda for the American hemisphere, 1931-35– Sandra Pujals8 The Left Book Club and its associates: The transnational circulation of socialist ideas in an Atlantic network– Matheus Cardoso da SilvaPart III Africa, the Soviet Union and the Cold War9 The beginning of the Cold War in the Gold Coast? – Marika Sherwood10 Decolonisation and the Cold War: African student elites in the USSR, 1955-64 – Harold D. Weaver11 ‘Peoples' Friendship’ in the Cold War: the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University – Rachel RubinAfterword: A Black journey of Red hope – Maxim Matusevich

'This ideologically diverse collection is uniformly well-written and exceedingly informative. The inescapable and unavoidable conclusion it renders is that the Russian Revolution of 1917 delivered a mighty blow against colonialism, imperialism and forms of apartheid alike. Simultaneously, by implication it blazes the trail and illuminates the way forward for those seeking to create a better world.' Gerald Horne, author of Paul Robeson: The Artist as RevolutionaryThe Russian Revolution of 1917 was not just a world-historical event in its own right, but also struck powerful blows against racism and imperialism, and so inspired many black radicals internationally. This edited collection explores the implications of the creation of the Soviet Union and the Communist International for black and colonial liberation struggles across the African diaspora. It examines the critical intellectual influence of Marxism and Bolshevism on the current of revolutionary ‘black internationalism’ and analyses how ‘Red October’ was viewed within the contested articulations of different struggles against racism and colonialism. Challenging European-centred understandings of the Russian Revolution and the global left, The Red and the Black offers new insights on the relations between Communism, various lefts and anti-colonialisms across the Black Atlantic – including Garveyism and various other strands of Pan-Africanism. The volume makes a major and original intellectual contribution by making the relations between the Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic central to debates on questions relating to racism, resistance and social change.