James Lloydovich Patterson (russian: Джеймс Ллойдович Паттерсон, Dzheyms Lloydovich Patterson, ; born 17 July 1933) is a Russian-American writer, naval officer, and former child actor of

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

and

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

descent.

Biography

James Lloydovich Patterson was born in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

on July 17, 1933, the eldest of three sons born to an

immigrant to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and his Ukrainian-born Russian wife. Having traveled to the USSR with Langston Hughes and others in 1932, James Patterson's father Lloyd Patterson, just 22, decided to remain permanently after meeting and falling in love with James' mother, the artist-designer Vera Ippolitovna Aralova. James Patterson appeared in the Soviet cinema as a toddler in the 1936 hit Soviet film ''

Circus A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicyclist ...

''.where, parallel to his own life, he played the role of the dark-skinned child of an

interracial couple Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different races or racialized ethnicities. In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation. In 196 ...

. It was his only film appearance. Following

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

's attack on the Soviet Union, James, his brothers, his grandmother and his mother were evacuated to Sverdlovsk, while his father, who had obtained a position with Soviet radio as a presenter for

English-speaking Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the ''Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest language ...

listeners abroad, remained on the job in Moscow. He was transferred to Komsolmosk on Amur where died in 1942 from serious wounds he suffered in the bombing of the radio station in Moscow.Dimenshteyn, Ilya
«Любимый воспитанник Любови Орловой».
''Ves.lv''. 18 September 2008. Retrieved 9 May 2010. James was a member of the

Komsomol The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (russian: link=no, Всесоюзный ленинский коммунистический союз молодёжи (ВЛКСМ), ), usually known as Komsomol (; russian: Комсомол, links=n ...

and graduated from the

Riga Nakhimov Naval School The Riga Nakhimov Naval School (; ) is one of the former Nakhimov Naval Schools in the Soviet Union. It existed from 1945 to 1953 in Riga, the capital Latvian SSR, where it was located. Throughout its eight year existence, it operated from the ...

, a prestigious

military academy A military academy or service academy is an educational institution which prepares candidates for service in the officer corps. It normally provides education in a military environment, the exact definition depending on the country concerned. ...

for boys of high-school age, in 1951. Lauded as a model

cadet A cadet is an officer trainee or candidate. The term is frequently used to refer to those training to become an officer in the military, often a person who is a junior trainee. Its meaning may vary between countries which can include youths in ...

, he proceeded to receive further training as a submariner in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

. Commissioned as an officer in the Soviet Navy, Patterson began serving with the

Black Sea Fleet Chernomorskiy flot , image = Great emblem of the Black Sea fleet.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Great emblem of the Black Sea fleet , dates = May 13, ...

in 1955. By the 1960s, Patterson's professional ambitions had turned to writing. Still serving in the navy, he published his literary debut, the poetry collection ''Russia. Africa'' in 1963. Leaving the Soviet Navy, Patterson graduated from the

Maxim Gorky Literature Institute The Maxim Gorky Literature Institute (russian: Литературный институт им. А. М. Горького) is an institution of higher education in Moscow. It is located at 25 Tverskoy Boulevard in central Moscow. History The insti ...

in 1964, drawing inspiration from subjects as diverse as the sea, the beginning of the

Space Age The Space Age is a period encompassing the activities related to the Space Race, space exploration, space technology, and the cultural developments influenced by these events, beginning with the Sputnik_1#Launch_and_mission, launch of Sputnik 1 ...

, and the racial tension around the time of the

desegregation Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact o ...

efforts of the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

. Having authored a number of works by the late 1960s, he was admitted as a member of the

USSR Union of Writers The Union of Soviet Writers, USSR Union of Writers, or Soviet Union of Writers (russian: Союз писателей СССР, translit=Soyuz Sovetstikh Pisatelei) was a creative unions in the Soviet Union, creative union of professional writers ...

in 1967. The sweeping political and economic changes during the breakdown of the Soviet Union were also accompanied by profound difficulties for the new Russian society; a frequent visitor to his father's homeland, James Patterson and his mother immigrated to the United States from the

Russian Federation Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

in the 1990s. Following the death of his mother in 2001, Patterson remained in the United States. He lives a quiet life in Washington. The English translation of his 1964 book CHRONICLE OF THE LEFT HAND, was published in 2022 by New Academia Press.

Selected works

* Россия. Африка (''Russia. Africa'', poems, 1963) * Хроника левой руки: Новеллы. М., 1964 (''Chronicles of the Left Hand: Novellas'', 1964) * Рождение ливня (''Birth of the Rain'', poems, 1973) * Взаимодействие (''Interaction'', poems, 1978) * Зимние ласточки (''Winter Swallows'', poems, 1980) * Красная лилия (''The Red Lily'', poems, 1984)

References

External links

«Кого мир дал России»

* Анатолий Филатов
Негритёнок из кинофильма Цирк
a memoir about Patterson, proza.ru {{DEFAULTSORT:Patterson, James Lloydovich 1933 births Living people Writers from Moscow Russian people of African-American descent Russian people of Ukrainian descent Russian emigrants to the United States Russian male poets Soviet male film actors Soviet Navy officers Soviet male poets 20th-century Russian male writers Soviet people of African-American descent Soviet male child actors Maxim Gorky Literature Institute alumni 21st-century male writers

Biography

Selected works

References

Further reading

External links