The Black Russian by Vladimir Alexandrov

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on March 5, 2013

Both history and biography, The Black Russian is sort of a Horatio Alger story with a twist. Hard work and perseverance are the formula for success, but in this case success was possible for a black American only because he became an entrepreneur in Russia, where his race was not an obstacle to achievement.

Born in the Mississippi Delta to recently freed slaves, Frederick Thomas was raised in a successful farm family. Unlike many Delta blacks, Thomas was given the opportunity to discover that there was more to life than "an endless cycle of labor, food, and sleep." When his father and stepmother lost their property to an unscrupulous white landowner -- a swindle that was partially rectified after a protracted legal battle -- Thomas learned how quickly the course of a life can change. More than once, his own life followed a similar "rags-to-riches-to-rags" pattern.

Supporting himself with service jobs in restaurants and hotels, Thomas made his way to Chicago and then to Brooklyn. He escaped American racism by moving to London and then to Paris. Thomas worked his way through Europe, refining his skills in the restaurant and hotel trades, and in 1899 made his way to Russia. Thomas eventually settled in Moscow, an ethnically diverse city that drew no color lines. In 1912 he entered into a partnership to turn an old Moscow theater into a classy establishment that offered fine dining, dancing, and stage entertainment. By the end of its first season, Thomas was a rich man. His success encouraged him to make new investments.

To protect himself (and his businesses) from the consequences of war, Thomas became a Russian citizen in 1915. Just two years later, in a time of revolution, his status as a "prosperous bourgeois capitalist" worked against him. To avoid arrest, he made a perilous journey from Moscow to Odessa, but he was still at risk. Fortunately, Thomas never informed the United States of his new citizenship and neither did Russia, omissions that benefited Thomas when, in 1919, having lost the wealth he accumulated over twenty years to the Bolshevik Revolution, he fled Odessa with the help of the American consul.

At the age of forty-seven, virtually penniless, Thomas arrived in Constantinople determined to reinvent himself. An influx of Westerners created opportunities that Thomas was positioned to exploit. Thomas knew how to provide the elegant and sophisticated food and entertainment that wealthy foreigners craved and that conservative Turks condemned. Despite complications caused by an ex-wife and a racist American bureaucrat, Thomas was able to replicate (at least to some degree) his success in the entertainment industry. After a few years, however, it became clear that Thomas had escaped from one volatile political situation only to find himself in the midst of another. Denied the benefits of an American passport, apparently due to a combination of racism and incompetence in a State Department that refused to acknowledge his American birth, Thomas was stuck in Constantinople. He ended his days in prison, unable to pay the debts that accumulated after the Turkish government made a point of sabotaging foreign enterprises.

The Black Russian makes clear that Thomas was a remarkable man. He had as many successes and failures as Donald Trump (although, unlike Trump, he couldn't rely on bankruptcy courts to rescue him from hard times). His successful introduction of jazz to his clientele in both Moscow and Constantinople seems both visionary and quixotic. Yet as a biography, The Black Russian is curiously detached from its subject. We see hints of Thomas' personality from time to time (sometimes boastful, sometimes devious, and oddly unattached to his children), but I never got the sense of knowing Thomas as a person.

The Black Russian is clearly the product of meticulous research. History is often based on inference, but Vladimir Alexandrov is careful to distinguish between known and assumed facts. There are times when the book threatens to bog down with detail, and several collateral passages come across as filler that have little to do with Thomas' life. Still, the book isn't dull. While Alexandrov's writing style isn't always lively, it is neither dry nor overly academic. Although The Black Russian is filled with census data and other statistics, Alexandrov gives careful attention to the cultural atmosphere that surrounded Thomas, both in the United States and abroad. Alexandrov paints a descriptive picture of the entertainment business in both Moscow and Constantinople, underscoring the contrast between their repressive governance and the public's lust for the things their leaders condemned as decadent. In short, The Black Russian tells an interesting and informative -- but not particularly captivating -- story of a largely unknown American entrepreneur who found success in surprising environments. 

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