Even now, when the age of global interconnectedness has taught us to look beyond the obvious, many express surprise at the very notion of historical links between Russia and Africa. But such links did indeed exist and, on occasion, even proliferated. As demonstrated by a number of contributors to this volume, the Russian presence in Africa can be traced more than three hundred years, when several Russian and Russified adventurers found their way to South Africa. Peter the Great dreamed of an expedition to the “glorious island of Madagaskar,” and only an unfortunate convergence of circumstances prevented the eccentric tsar from realizing his ambitious plan. At the time of the late-nineteenth century European scramble for Africa, Russians enjoyed visibility and royal patronage at the court of the Orthodox Ethiopian emperor Menelik II. Russian advisors and Red Cross volunteers rendered critical military and medical assistance to Addis Ababa during its successful campaign against the Italians in 1896....
--From Africa in Russia, Russia in Africa: Three Centuries of Encounters, edited by Maxim Matusevich, quoted above
It was through birth that I knew there had been Africans in Russia (and vice versa), but few history books I read even mentioned such encounters. And when I picked up Matusevich's unprecedented volume on the historical links between Africa and Russia, I sighed.
A sigh of relief, perhaps?
More likely: A long overlooked "floodgate of history" had just been swung open before me--and I was overwhelmed.
[Portrait of Puskhin, a Russian poet who is believed to have had Abyssinian roots]
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