Introduction: On Black Life and Blackness in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Societies

Nearly half a century ago, Allison Blakely produced Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought . The landmark text explored Black people’s lives and experiences in the Russian empire and the Soviet Union and how non-Black people in those spaces received them and conceptualized blackness from the seventeenth century to the 1980s. Since its publication, many of the Black characters and historical episodes adorning Russia and the Negro have become the terrains or mainstays of scholarly debates about Black life and experiences and ideas of blackness in Slavic, eastern, southeastern, and central European, as well as Eurasian societies. 1 Roughly two decades later, others took up the mantel.