In early December 1963, African students occupied Red Square to record the first racial protest in the USSR. It is also the first in Moscow’s history since the 1920s. The reason? The death of a medical student from Ghana, which remained unanswered and motivated colleagues to seek the account of the Soviet authorities, whose actions at the time demonstrated a lack of any professionalism. On December 13, 1963, the body was dumped in nowhere near a rural road to Horvino, a neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Moscow.
Assare-Ado is 29 years old, a native of Ghana, who arrived in Moscow on a scholarship to become a doctor. Pathologists will find a small one early under the chin, which, however, turns out to be fatal. There is no way that Assare got lost and wandered in this area by mistake, after officially living in another city. And so began the great trouble for Soviet leaders. First of all, we will find that Marxist anti-colonial policy in Africa is a chance for direct influence, but after the imposition of a new regime in a certain territory, the USSR began to invest in the next generation, and in addition to profession, can add ideology.
In 1960, the first university for students from Africa, Asia and Latin America opened in Moscow. It is named after Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba. With the influx of new students, it makes sense to come to some racial conflicts that will inevitably happen, but this is the first case of murder. Assare’s colleagues spread rumors that the man was preparing for a wedding on Saturday, but it was not reached. According to some protesters, the case in this regard is that their Ghanaian friend fell in love with a Russian woman whose family did not approve of the relationship.
Another theory is that he was most likely killed in a racial conflict and an accidentally provoked attack. Not to mention that many students were extremely unhappy with the fact that the USSR did nothing about their complaints. In response, African students marched to Red Square, easily raising their slogans. The students first protested in front of the Ghanaian embassy and then in front of Red Square. “Moscow is the second Alabama,” “Stop the killings of Africans,” “It’s the same all over the world,” police said, stopping the protest before it reached a more serious magnitude. No arrests are made, at this point such actions will only worsen the basic actions.
Finally, the Kremlin gates, where various representatives of the Western media began to collect interviews. It seems that the vicious Western practices do not seem to be unknown to the progressive socialism in the East. The only useful move is to open the door to negotiations. The Soviet Minister of Education, Vyacheslav Eliutin, invited several protesters to talk. His intervention demonstrates special professionalism. The Minister expressed regret and sympathy for the deceased Ado and before the start of negotiations, called on everyone in the cabinet to remain a minute of silence in his memory. After this act he decided to start the conversation first:
“We have a huge country and in it it is possible to find isolated people who are bad people, as in any other country, there are a small number of people prepared to commit acts of hooliganism. These isolated individuals can, of course, create aggression against a Soviet or foreign citizen. But it is inadmissible and incorrect to generalize or draw conclusions on the basis of such cases, if they occur, or to talk about the relations between Soviet citizens towards you on this basis. This is something that every unbiased, objective person must understand. This has never happened, and none of you can say the opposite, that any of our deans, teachers or ministry officials have missed a bad word or committed a lawsuit against you. “
The strategy for resolving the protest and retaliation is as follows. Against the backdrop of disgruntled students, they promised one of the most rigorous investigations, denied the whole protest – here they said it fell into the hands of the imperialists for a single purpose, to strengthen the negative view of the USSR – with the help of student newspapers and more. broad academic circles are beginning to deal with the most active instigators of the protest. The next moves are also interesting.
Two medical students, as well as Ghanaians, were invited to testify during the autopsy. The aim is to ensure full transparency of the case, but no traces of a violent death can be found in the investigation. The pathologist’s version is that the student died as a result of bad weather and a serious amount of alcohol consumed.
The doctors concluded that he had fallen victim to his own irresponsibility and had never been the victim of aggression. With this, despite protests from some countries, action continues, this time discussing exactly what power Africans have to mobilize and organize in such a short time. The chronology of events looks like this:
The body was found on December 13th, and protests began on December 18th. The Ministry of Education received information that students from Leningrad and Kaliningrad were mobilizing and heading to Moscow to protest in front of the embassy. The official date, according to the authorities, is December 9, so how exactly was the event ahead of itself. Upon request from the embassy, they denied ever having organized the students and called them on specific dates in front of the embassy itself. The curious thing in this case is that according to the authorities, Ado was a student in Kaliningrad and most likely went to be part of this event.
At the same time, it became clear that the African students were rude and eventually forced the Ghanaian ambassador to barricade himself in his apartment on the top floor of the embassy. The indictment finally includes Western embassies, the president of Ghana and some other authorities linked to the idea of destabilizing the system. Finally, the following measures are taken: first, some of the most active African students are expelled, the protest is discredited and described as an attempt at propaganda, and ideological checks and admission of new students begin to be viewed with a different eye.
