“You Are Not Alone”: Angela Davis and the Soviet Dreams of Freedom

Abstract

In the early 1970s, the plight of a charismatic Black American communist and philosophy professor Angela Davis, put on trial in the United States for her alleged involvement in a courtroom shootout in California, galvanized international public opinion. A massive publicity campaign in support of Angela Davis resonated across the globe and drew in millions of volunteers and sympathizers. The nations of the communist bloc, led by the Soviet Union, were particularly active in rallying their citizens in defense of a jailed American radical. In 1970–1972, Davis became a household name throughout the Soviet Union (but also in East Germany, Cuba, Poland, and other socialist nations). The “Free Angela Davis” campaign was unprecedented in scope and left a lasting mark on the collective memory of the citizens of the Soviet Union and its socialist satellites. Such was the impact of this propaganda juggernaut that decades later the image of Angela Davis remained current as a pop-cultural phenomenon across the former Soviet spaces and a symbol of unrealized and often conflicting aspirations towards freedom.