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1 results

  • 26 - Racism and Democracy

  • from Part V - Journey’s End
  • Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, West Chester University, Pennsylvania
  • Book:
    Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists
    Published online:
    18 January 2024
    Print publication:
    22 February 2024, pp 295-313

  • Summary

    Chapter 26 examines Ilf and Petrov’s efforts to apply to the American South the combination of Soviet antiracism and romantic racialism that they brought to bear on their adventures in Black New York. To highlight their unique perspective, it compares the “Negroes” installment of their photo essay with the nearly contemporary photobooks in which teams of American photographers and authors documented the Depression-ravaged region. Drawing on their conversation with a white hitchhiker, Ilf and Petrov depicted American racism as a feature of the “slave-owning psychology” that “infected” a large number, if not all, white people. Nonetheless, they imagined that the “Southern gentleman,” who endorsed lynching, might “suddenly” come to appreciate the humanity of Black Americans. This hope appears grounded in Ilf and Petrov’s own experience of unexpectedly finding something valuable in the democratic relations between people visible everywhere in America, most notably at a presidential press conference.