{"id":45558,"date":"2016-02-06T22:11:05","date_gmt":"2016-02-06T22:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=45558"},"modified":"2016-02-06T22:11:05","modified_gmt":"2016-02-06T22:11:05","slug":"black-in-the-ussr-the-children-of-soviet-africa-search-for-their-own-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=45558","title":{"rendered":"Black in the USSR: The children of Soviet Africa search for their own identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black in the USSR: The children of Soviet Africa search for their own identity<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Calvert Journal<\/a>
\n2016-02-04<\/p>\n

Photography by Liz Johnson Artur<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nPhotograph by Liz Johnson Artur<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\u201cWhen people ask me about my background I usually start by explaining how my mum is Russian, my dad is Ghanaian and that I was born in Bulgaria<\/a>,\u201d says the photographer Liz Johnson Artur<\/a>. \u201cIt often becomes a long explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The explanation goes something like this. Along with many African students in the 1960s, Johnson\u2019s Ghanaian father was given the chance to study in Eastern Europe<\/a> as part of the Soviet Union\u2019s<\/a> efforts to expand its influence across the African continent<\/a> during the Cold War<\/a>. His time in Bulgaria studying biochemistry was cut short after four years when all Ghanaian students were expelled from the country following a confrontation between African students and the police. By then he\u2019d already met Johnson Artur\u2019s mother, who gave birth to their daughter in 1964, a few months after his departure.<\/p>\n

Johnson Artur spent her childhood in Bulgaria and then Germany<\/a> and has been based in Britain<\/a> since 1990. Her father was unable to return to Bulgaria and is now settled in Ghana<\/a>. She only met him for the first time in 2010. After doing so, she felt moved to start documenting the stories of other Russians of African and Caribbean origin. \u201cMost black Russians that I met in Moscow<\/a> and St Petersburg<\/a> had also grown up without their fathers. Some had been fostered or grown up in children\u2019s homes and had never met their mothers. But we all agreed that we felt Russian as well as African.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire photo-essay here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black in the USSR: The children of Soviet Africa search for their own identity The Calvert Journal 2016-02-04 Photography by Liz Johnson Artur Photograph by Liz Johnson Artur \u201cWhen people ask me about my background I usually start by explaining how my mum is Russian, my dad is Ghanaian and that I was born in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,24,21,28,125,13743,8],"tags":[22918,7705,147,7706,13848,22917,22249],"class_list":["post-45558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-arts","category-latincarib","category-europe","category-identitydevelopment","category-interviews","category-media-archive","tag-calvert-journal","tag-liz-johnson-artur","tag-photography","tag-russia","tag-soviet-union","tag-the-calvert-journal","tag-ussr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45559,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45558\/revisions\/45559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}