My dad is an airline pilot and a jumpseater on one of his flights was another pilot from a different airline commuting to work. This guy was raised in Ethiopia, although my dad says he was of European descent and was obviously raised by well to do parents. He showed my dad a bunch of photos of himself growing up in Ethiopia so I have no reason to doubt the man was from there. At some point in the flight, the man started talking about how around the 80's and 90's the Russian government came in and took thousands of Ethiopian children back to Russia where they kept them and raised them to adulthood. He said that in recent years most of these children have returned to Ethiopia and that they are the ones who are getting elected to government and basically run the country. According to my dad, the guy was on the verge of tears while saying all this because he was upset that his homeland was being ruined. Anyways, this is not something I had ever heard of and after googling around I still couldn't find anything that mentioned this happening. I'm not a historian by any means, in fact I'm also a pilot, but I was just wondering if this is anything you all could shed light on or have even heard of before. Thanks!
The Soviet Union invited many hundreds of thousands of young people from African or other Third World countries to study in the Soviet Union. Most often this would culminate in college-level education at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. The intent of this program was to improve the reputation of the Soviet Union among these African and other non-aligned states, demonstrating the generosity of the USSR. Additionally, it was expected that these students would return to their home countries and positively represent the Soviet Union and communism in their home countries.
Young Ethiopians did participate in this program and attended Patrice Lumumba University through scholarships. I believe this is what the man your father spoke to was speaking of. I have never heard of the forced abduction of Ethiopian children to the Soviet Union.
and this book have brief discussions of Patrice Lumumba University.
There is also a history of Russian collaboration with Ethiopia. At some point in the 18th century, the Ethiopians began sending a limited number of (possibly) professional soldiers as tribute.* These men composed the Abyssinian Guard, a small yet notable detachment of foreigners who were employed at Court. I'm tempted to say that there were no more than a few dozen of them at any one time but they appear to have been half-soldier/half-usher.
*Most sources state that Peter the Great began the tradition of importing guards from Ethiopia. He ostensibly did this in order to emphasize the global primacy of Russia as the leader of the Orthodox Church. His successors apparently continued the tradition. An alternate source states that the guards were black slaves purchased in Turkey although I haven't been able to find much else to back this claim up.
Ethiopian here. I know alot of Russian Ethiopian(biracials) in the Australian Ethiopian community for some reason, perhaps this explains why.
Given Russia's contemporary racism, how was the lifestyle for these students at the time?