| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 239 words from this article are provided below; about 519 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Kate A. Baldwin. Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922–1963. (New Americanists.) Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 346. Cloth $59.95, paper $19.95.

Given the dramatic changes in the world over the past decade and a half, it is easy to forget the influence that the Soviet Union exerted over America's intellectual life, including that of a number of leading African-American intellectuals of the twentieth century. Kate A. Baldwin's book takes up that subject—and its obverse, the impact of African-American intellectuals on Soviet Russia—from the vantage point of Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson. A book considering the international context of the ideological development of those four important figures of the black Left would be an enormous contribution in itself. Baldwin's project is much more ambitious than that. She aspires to "a genealogy of 'the Negro question' as it emerged in dialogue between the Soviet Union and these black Americans" (p. 3) during the travels of each to the USSR over the period from the early 1920s to the late 1950s. Although the discussion of the Left's political program for African Americans has become well-trodden ground, Baldwin significantly adds to our understanding of the interaction between black and red. Her knowledge of Russian language, literature, and culture and access to documents relatively newly available constitute great strengths.

. . .

There are about 519 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.