Poet-Playwright Directs a Survey [of] National Minorities in Europe and the Soviet Union

New York: Edutravel, 1937. A 4” x 9” brochure advertising Langston Hughes’ planned trip to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1937. The trip never occurred, as Hughes had directed his attention to reporting on the Spanish Civil War. The planned 2 month trip was set to be a sociological learning experience guided by Hughes in an attempt to spread leftist ideals in the face of fascistic powers rising in western Europe. Near fine. This brochure illustrates one example of Hughes' political activism during the late 1930s, when many American intellectuals viewed the Soviet Union as a counterweight to rising fascism in Europe. The proposed tour reflects Hughes' dual role as literary figure and political activist, using his reputation to organize educational travel that would expose participants to Soviet approaches to ethnic minorities; a subject of particular relevance given his own experiences with racial discrimination in America. Hughes ultimately chose to cover the Spanish Civil War as a correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American, recognizing the immediate urgency of the conflict over the planned Soviet expedition. His Spanish dispatches became some of his most important journalistic work, while the Soviet Union's reputation among American leftists would later be complicated by the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939. The document captures a specific moment in Hughes' political evolution and the broader American left's relationship with international communism before subsequent disillusionment, representing the optimism many felt about Soviet social policies during this period.