During the 1950s and 60s at the height of the civil rights movement in the US, the Soviets were attempting to make as much mileage as they could from this perceived hypocrisy in the land of the free, by propagandising that such disturbances as Little Rock 1957 and Eisenhower's dispatch of the 101st Airborne to protect the black students enrolled, made a mockery of the rights which the US was supposed to stand for. This Soviet stand was also part of the Commie campaign to support the interests of 3rd World revolutionaries. However, the Soviets could be argued to have been hypocrites themselves on the race issue, based on the Communist oppression of non-Slavic minorities- as with the Chechens, Ingush, Balkars and Koreans deported to Kazakhstan during 1944- and the perception that esp Central Asian Muslims were inferior subject ppls. IIRC, the Soviets started their economic programs which turned into ecological disasters, namely the use of Kazakhstan as a nuclear testing ground and growing cotton in Uzbekistan irrigated from the Aral Sea and completely salinating the local land, from the 50s onwards, with no regard whatsoever for the interests of the local inhabitants, whose rights were held as secondary to the interests of the Soviet state. Now, WI concrete evidence of Soviet racism was somehow made available in the US at the time of the civil rights movement ? What effect would there have been on the USSR's attempts to curry favour with 3rd World liberation movements ?
(This perspective is also discussed in Larry Collins' novel MAZE, although the context is in the 1980s with the Soviets worrying about the rise of Islamic separatism in Central Asia).
(This perspective is also discussed in Larry Collins' novel MAZE, although the context is in the 1980s with the Soviets worrying about the rise of Islamic separatism in Central Asia).