The birdlike Ceylonese student, his black eyes magnified by big horn-rimmed spectacles, explained why he had come to Moscow: “My father is a government clerk, and with six others in the family, he couldn’t afford to send me to the university at home. Here at Friendship University, I not only get a monthly stipend but can even save half of it. Not bad for a start, eh?” The Ceylonese continued: “It’s a good thing the Socialists back home won the last election. If the pro-American party had won, they wouldn’t have allowed us to come.”
Moscow’s new People’s Friendship University was hatched suddenly by Nikita Khrushchev during his trip to Indonesia last February. It was opened this fall with appropriate rites in the floodlit Hall of Columns, where U-2 Pilot Francis Powers was tried. “Do not be afraid of Moscow’s frosts,” said a Russian girl as she peered at 400 students from 59 countries. “The warmth of our hearts is with you, and it will keep you warm.” Said Khrushchev: “We shall not force our ideology on you, but if any of you become infected with the disease of the times, Communism, I ask you not to put the blame on us.”
Friends & Aliens. In plant, Friendship University consists of two former military schools on opposite sides of Moscow. Academically, it is a five-year diet of heavily technological courses (including a first year of Russian for six hours a day). Politically, it is supposedly neuter: a benign effort to train “children of the workers” in Asia, Africa, Latin America. The lure is free transportation, free room and books, a monthly stipend of $90 (which is twice as much as Russian students get) and a $300 clothing allowance for those Moscow frosts. The Russians say 43,000 people applied this year.
Last week the university still had a raw look—crates piled in corridors, folders stacked on floors—and a pesky problem with the health of shivering students from tropical countries. The infirmary did a brisk practice in everything from runny noses to pneumonia.* But most students adapted quickly to the cold, and several Ghanaians were becoming good skaters.
False Start. Friendship University, which plans to enroll 4,000 students in four years, is an acknowledgment that the Russians have been slow to welcome foreign students. Last year Russia had about 1,000 students from non-Communist Asia, Africa and Latin America, compared with 35,672 in the U.S. It is also a sign that the Russians realize how much they alienated those they did invite in recent years.
Black Africans in Moscow encounter little pure racial prejudice, but they have had some disillusioning encounters with the Russian police state, which contrasts badly even with their memories of colonial regimes in Africa. In a recent series of articles in the Lagos Sunday Times, Nigerian Student Chukwuemeke Okonkwo told how he rushed to Moscow in 1957, to find that Russian students were awed by “our easy manner, our gaiety and our open debates.” When the Russians started imitating Africans at Moscow University, down rattled the Iron Curtain. Africans were segregated, jazz records were banned, free debates were outlawed, dates with Russian girls were forbidden. A few Africans were even set upon and beaten.
Okonkwo was also dismayed to find himself exploited for propaganda. Last July he was boxing in a Moscow University gym when he was asked to pose for a photograph. In August he recognized himself in a full-page picture in a big-circulation magazine. On his wrists were broken chains, and near him cringed a white man with a whip.
“Apartheid U.” Enough of a sour taste remains from these incidents for Africans in Moscow to call Friendship University “Apartheid U.,” even though the government forehandedly registered 60 Russians to make it seem less segregated. Moreover, on the theory that some of the blame was due to getting the “wrong” kind of student. Friendship University has tried to pick its own students abroad (India balked at that condition; Burma, the Congo, Nepal and Ethiopia refused to let any students go). Friendship University seems to have plenty of money, room, and even its courses do not smack too much of party dogmatism. But Russia has a long way to go before it can compete equally with the U.S., Britain or France as first choice in the contest for the best young minds of the backward parts of the world.
* The medics also pondered an unexpected problem: two African girls who arrived in an advanced state of pregnancy.
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